"MEMBERS  OF  ONE  BODY 


BY 

SAMUEL  McCHORD  CROTHERS 


Preached  at  Unity  Church,  St.  Paul,  Minnesota 


BOSTON 

GEORGE  H.   ELLIS,    141    FRANKLIN    STREET 
1892 


COPYRIGHT 

BY  S.   M.   CROTHERS 

I892 


INTRODUCTION 

THERE  is  a  loyalty  to  one's  creed  whicn 
is  to  be  commended.  The  man  who  has 
a  reason  for  his  own  opinion,  and  who  has 
the  courage  always  to  declare  it,  is  not  to 
be  despised;  and  each  church  may  well  seek 
to  cultivate  such  loyalty  on  the  part  of  its 
members.  But  it  has  also  a  larger  work 
than  this.  It  must  teach  loyalty  to  the 
spirit  which  is  behind  all  forms  of  thought 
and  worship.  That  religious  culture  is  im- 
perfect which  does  not  enable  one  to  inter- 
pret sympathetically  his  neighbor's  creed 
and  to  see  its  spiritual  significance.  In 
the  following  sermons  I  attempted  to  per- 
form this  service  for  my  own  congregation; 
and  they  are  now  published  with  the  hope 
that  they  may  be  of  some  help  to  others. 

In  confining  my  attention  to  a  few  famil- 


333912 


4  Introduction 

iar  phases  of  historic  Christianity,  I  have 
not  meant  to  imply  that  here  we  may  find 
the  limit  to  our  religious  sympathies.  Be- 
yond Christianity  is  humanity.  He  who  be- 
gins to  ask,  "Who  is  my  neighbor?"  will 
not  be  satisfied  with  any  answer  which  does 
not  include  all  the  race.  But,  lest  we  lose 
ourselves  in  barren  generalizations,  and,  at- 
tempting to  include  all,  fail  to  come  into 
close  sympathy  with  any,  let  us  remember 
that  "neighbor"  means  always  the  "nigh- 
dweller."  We  must  begin  with  the  form  of 
faith  that  is  nearest  us  and  that  touches  us. 
When  we  come  to  understand  that  and  see 
in  it  something  to  love,  we  shall  be  pre- 
pared to  reach  out  and  touch  what  is  still 
beyond. 

ST.  PAUL,  MINN.,  May  i,  1892. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.     ROMAN  CATHOLICISM 9 

II.     CALVINISM 29 

III.  METHODISM 51 

IV.  RATIONALISM 69 

V.     MYSTICISM 91 

VI.    THE  UNITY  OF  CHRISTENDOM    ....  109 


ROMAN    CATHOLICISM 


I. 

ROMAN    CATHOLICISM 

ONE  cannot  treat  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  as  he  would  one  of  the  little 
sects  into  which  Christendom  is  divided. 
It  is  an  institution  august  and  historic. 
One  may  recognize  all  its  corruptions,  and 
yet  still  admire.  Simply  to  have  lived 
through  so  many  generations  and  to  have 
adapted  itself  to  so  many  changing  condi- 
tions is  to  have  done  much.  And,  unlike 
many  Oriental  religions,  its  life  has  not 
been  measured  by  mere  duration,  but  has 
been  full  of  action.  Not  "cycles  of 
Cathay,"  but  centuries  of  Europe  and  the 
still  more  vital  years  of  America,  have 
tested  its  quality.  To  attempt  to  sum  up 
its  good  and  ill,  and  strike  the  balance  be- 
tween, would  be  presumptuous.  It  is  the 
church  of  Saint  Francis  and  of  the  Borgias, 
of  Fdnelon  and  of  Torquemada:  it  has 


IO  "Members  of  One  Body" 

produced  the  "  Imitation  of  Christ  "  and  the 
horrors  of  Saint  Bartholomew's  Eve.  All 
this  is  but  to  say  that  it  has  had  a  history. 
It  has  touched  the  heights,  and  has  not 
been  unacquainted  with  the  depths  of  hu- 
man nature.  To  judge  it  is  to  sit  in  judg- 
ment on  humanity.  But,  not  venturing 
upon  this,  we  may,  with  profit  to  ourselves, 
call  to  mind  some  of  the  good  things  for 
which  we  are  indebted  to  the  Catholic 
Church. 

And,  first  of  all,  we  are  indebted  to  it 
for  the  emphasis  which  it  places  on  the 
historic  element  in  religion.  Engrossed 
in  the  present  or  dreaming  of  the  future, 
we  are  apt  to  forget  the  past  or  to  treat 
it  with  contempt;  and,  in  so  doing,  we 
rob  the  present  of  its  strength  and  the 
future  of  its  glory.  For,  when  we  would 
paint  the  picture  of  religion,  the  canvas  of 
the  present  is  too  small,  and  that  of  the 
future  too  unsubstantial,  for  the  large,  free 
outlines.  Centuries  must  pass  before  we 
can  discern  the  true  proportions  of  great  men 
or  trace  the  full  effects  of  their  thoughts  and 
deeds.  As  with  secular,  so  with  religious 


Roman  Catholicism  n 

heroes :  there  is  no  substitute  for  the  test  of 
time.  The  new  sects  of  Protestantism  suf- 
fer greatly  from  the  lack  of  historic  per- 
spective. The  little  great  man  of  to-day  is 
admired  out  of  all  proportion  to  his  worth, 
and  a  mere  eddy  of  thought  is  often  mis- 
taken for  the  main  current.  Religion  is 
vulgarized  by  being  treated  as  if  it  were  a 
new  invention,  and  it  is  taken  for  granted 
that  the  latest  fashion  is  the  best. 

The  existence  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  is  a  protest  against  all  this.  Chris- 
tianity, it  says,  is  a  thing  not  of  to-day,  but 
for  all  time.  It  is  not  merely  for  the  com- 
fort of  the  private  soul,  but  it  has  some- 
thing public  and  continuous.  The  grace  of 
which  Holy  Church  is  minister  is  perennial. 
As  there  is  a  spirit  of  Christ  which  is  im- 
mortal, so  there  is  also  an  ever-living 
"Body  of  Christ."  The  communion  of  the 
saints  is  no  mere  dogma.  All  the  devout 
genius  of  the  Church  has  been  enlisted  in 
the  work  of  making  it  vivid  and  soul-en- 
trancing. We  say  of  some  few  famous  men 
that  their  names  have  become  household 
words;  but  the  phrase  is  but  faintly  expres- 


12  "Members  of  One  Body" 

sive  of  the  sacred  familiarity  of  those 
names  which  are  repeated,  generation  after 
generation,  in  the  hours  of  prayer.  Who 
can  estimate  the  power  of  the  associations 
that  cluster  around  them?  Modern  reform- 
ers talk  much  of  the  "solidarity  of  the 
race";  the  ancient  Church  has  in  a  meas- 
ure realized  it.  The  individual  entering 
it  is  no  more  "a  stranger  and  an  exile,  but 
a  fellow-citizen  with  the  saints  and  of  the 
household  of  God." 

The  worship  of  the  saints  seems  idola- 
trous to  the  Protestant,  but  it  readily  yields 
its  finer  meanings.  For  what  is  worship 
but  unbounded  admiration,  leading  one  to 
devote  himself  absolutely  to  the  service  of 
the  loved  one?  When  with  stern  icono- 
clasm  we  have  shattered  the  idols  of 
self-love,  and  ceased  altogether  from  our 
Mammon-worship,  there  will  be  time  for  us 
to  turn  our  zeal  against  the  worship  of  the 
saints;  or  perhaps  then  we  may  be  pre- 
pared for  the  worship  of  larger  ideals  of 
manhood  than  have  yet  been  received  into 
the  calendar  of  the  Church.  And  so,  too, 
the  doctrine  of  apostolic  succession  needs 


Roman  Catholicism  13 

only  to  be  enlarged  to  be  made  true.  It  is 
a  quaintly  conventional  expression  of  a  uni- 
versal law.  There  are  channels  of  grace 
which  may  be  traced  through  the  ages. 
Tradition  has  its  place  as  well  as  intuition. 
The  piety  of  to-day  is  the  result  of  the 
piety  of  the  past,  and  the  institutions  of 
religion  are  living  links  binding  together 
the  generations. 

Closely  connected  with  the  historic  con- 
tinuity of  the  Catholic  Church  is  its  power 
of  progress.  We  are  indebted  to  it  for  its 
illustration  of  a  great  church  adapting  itself 
to  ever  changing  conditions.  When  I  speak 
of  Catholicism  as  a  progressive  institution, 
both  friends  and  foes  may  take  exception  to 
my  words.  The  unchangeableness  of  the 
Church  is  a  favorite  thesis  of  many  of  its 
most  zealous  defenders.  Founded  on  a 
rock,  it  resists,  it  is  said,  the  surges  of 
time.  In  its  doctrine  and  ritual  it  pro- 
fesses to  be  always  the  same;  and  its  bitter 
adversaries  seize  upon  its  words,  and  accept 
the  superstition  of  immutability  as  some- 
thing well  established.  Yes,  they  say,  the 
Roman  Church  is  always  the  same.  It 


14  ''Members  of  One  Body" 

hunted  Giordano  Bruno  to  the  death;  and  it 
would  do  the  same  with  every  man  of  sci- 
ence to-day,  if  it  had  the  power.  The  fagots 
and  thumb-screws  are  only  laid  aside  for 
the  fit  occasion,  and  the  inquisitor  lurks 
behind  the  placid  mask  of  the  parish  priest. 
A  Catholic  prelate  is  supposed  to  be  in- 
capable of  disinterested  patriotism.  Do  we 
not  all  know  what  Jesuitism  is?  The  de- 
crees of  the  popes  are  never  revoked,  they 
are  esteemed  infallible.  Therefore,  the 
Church  to-day  must  be  held  strictly  re- 
sponsible for  whatever  it  has  at  any  time 
proclaimed.  And  it  is  further  said  that 
we  need  not  go  back  to  the  past  ages.  See 
what  Catholicism  to-day  is  in  Spain  or  in 
South  America,  and  you  will  see  what  it 
aspires  to  be  in  these  United  States. 

You  perceive  the  logic  of  this.  No  one 
argues  that  the  Presbyterian  General  As- 
sembly would  favor  the  burning  of  heretics 
because  the  Calvinists  of  Geneva  once  did 
so.  Nor  are  the  great  missionary  societies 
accused  of  seeking  to  conform  American 
Christianity  to  the  type  which  alone  they 
are  able  to  propagate  in  the  South  Sea 
Islands. 


Roman  Catholicism  15 

Catholicism  is  thus  treated  because  of  its 
own  ill-advised  boast,  but  this  boast  has 
no  justification  in  fact.  The  Church  sur- 
vives because  it  is  not  immutable.  It  is  a 
power  in  the  nineteenth  century  because  it 
is  able  to  adapt  itself  to  the  thought  and 
aspiration  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It 
succeeds  in  America  only  in  proportion  as 
it  becomes  American.  It  may  never  have 
the  courage  to  say,  "I  have  been  mistaken," 
—  few  churches  have  —  but  it  is  continually 
forgetting  the  things  that  are  behind.  An 
infallible  authority  is  precluded  from  ac- 
knowledging a  blunder.  The  only  thing 
left  for  it  is  to  forget  it.  That  is  what 
makes  a  progressive  Catholic  such  a  bad 
historian. 

I  do  not  ignore  the  long  warfare  of  the 
Church  against  science  or  its  continual  col- 
lisions with  advancing  thought.  These 
collisions  only  prove  that  the  huge  corpora- 
tion has  moved  more  slowly  than  the  alert, 
unencumbered  minds  of  individuals;  but 
yet  it  has  moved,  and,  in  spite  of  much  that 
has  been  reactionary,  the  movement  has 
been,  on  the  whole,  an  onward  one.  The 


16  "Members  of  One  Body" 

Catholic  Church  in  its  astronomy  stands 
to-day  with  Galileo  rather  than  with  the 
Inquisition.  If  the  controversy  of  the  six- 
teenth century  were  renewed,  it  would 
scarcely  uphold  Tetzel.  If  it  would  not 
favor  the  contention  of  Luther,  it  would  at 
least  give  heed  to  the  moderate  counsels  of 
Erasmus.  The  Protestant  controversialist 
is  unjust  when  he  pictures  the  Church  of 
Rome  as  so  joined  to  its  idols  that  reforma- 
tion must  always  come  from  without.  No 
greater  reformer  ever  lived  than  Gregory 
VII.  Many  of  the  councils  have  dealt 
unsparingly  with  old  abuses.  The  founders 
of  the  monastic  orders  were  all  daring  inno- 
vators in  their  day;  yet  they  were  not 
burned,  but  canonized.  The  leaders  of 
the  Church  have  been  often  quick  to  discern 
the  signs  of  the  times  and  to  face  new 
issues.  Leo  XIII.  writes  an  encyclical  let- 
ter on  the  labor  question.  Fancy  Leo  X. 
doing  that :  he  did  not  know  that  there  was 
a  labor  question.  But  the  significance  of 
the  position  of  the  Catholic  Church  lies 
deeper  than  this.  Its  doctrine  of  revelation 
contains  a  progressive  element  which  is 


Roman  Catholicism  1 7 

absent  from  Protestant  orthodoxy.  The 
Protestant  in  theory  limits  divine  revela- 
tion to  the  Scriptures,  and  in  practice  nar- 
rows it  still  further  to  the  summary  of 
Biblical  truth  contained  in  his  creed.  The 
result  is  an  unavoidable  rigidity  of  thought. 
No  room  being  left  for  expansion,  freedom 
can  only  be  obtained  by  a  series  of  violent 
explosions.  The  Catholic  avoids  this  diffi- 
culty; for  he  accepts  the  Church  rather 
than  the  Bible  as  the  chief  medium  of  rev- 
elation. He  thus  may  appeal  to  a  living 
authority.  The  Church  is  not  the  custodian 
of  a  treasure  which  cannot  be  augmented, 
but  it  is  itself  the  organ  of  the  religious 
consciousness.  There  may  be  perpetual 
evolution,  with  no  loss  of  divine  authority. 
Those  who  give  least  credence  to  the 
claims  of  the  Catholic  Church  to  infallibil- 
ity find  great  suggestiveness  in  its  underly- 
ing philosophy.  The  Protestant  theory  of 
authority  in  religion  must  either  be  ac- 
cepted or  rejected  in  its  entirety.  It  can- 
not be  modified  or  enlarged  without  destroy- 
ing its  meaning,  but  the  Catholic  idea  may 
be  expanded  indefinitely.  As  the  broad 


1 8  "Members  of  One  Body" 

study  of  sociology  takes  the  place  of  eccle- 
siastical history,  the  conception  of  human- 
ity as  a  living  body  will  grow  familiar.  Its 
intuitive  faiths,  its  unvarying  moral  laws, 
its  growing  experience,  will  be  accepted  as 
a  part  of  the  divine  revelation,  and  given 
the  same  obedience  now  rendered  to  the 
decrees  of  councils  and  of  popes.  When 
this  comes  to  pass,  the  Catholic  idea  will 
not  be  destroyed,  but  fulfilled. 

This  brings  us  to  that  characteristic  of 
the  ancient  Church  which  is  its  chief  glory, 
and  which  is  embodied  in  its  name, —  its 
catholicity.  It  is  interesting  to  observe 
how  the  extremes  of  Christendom  unite  in 
their  ideals.  On  the  one  side  are  the 
Catholics,  and  on  the  other  the  Liberal 
Christians;  and  yet  the  words  "liberal" 
and  "catholic"  are  synonymes.  I  turn  to 
the  dictionary,  and  find  "catholic"  defined 
as  "universal,  embracing  all,  wide  extend- 
ing, not  narrow-minded,  partial,  or  bigoted; 
possessing  a  mind  that  appreciates  all 
truth;  free  from  prejudice;  liberal." 

That  this  ideal  of  inclusiveness  has  been 
fully  realized  by  the  Catholic  Church  I  do 


Roman  Catholicism  19 

not  believe.  If  it  had  been,  there  would 
be  no  excuse  for  our  remaining  outside. 
But  it  has  been  partly  realized,  and  that  in 
a  direction  in  which  Protestant  liberalism 
has,  for  the  most  part,  failed.  In  attending 
a  convention  of  avowed  liberalists,  who 
were  seeking  a  basis  for  religious  union,  I 
was  struck  with  the  fact  that  all  kinds  of 
ideas  were  represented,  but  only  one  kind 
of  people.  All  who  took  part  in  the  proceed- 
ings were  persons  who  approached  religion 
from  the  intellectual  side.  The  Catholic 
Church  has  sometimes  been  inhospitable  to 
new  ideas,  but  it  has  always  offered  a  wide 
welcome  to  all  sorts  of  people.  Its  ideal  is 
in  striking  contrast  to  that  of  Puritanism. 
To  the  Puritan  the  church  is  a  little  com- 
pany of  the  elect  separated  from  the  rest  of 
the  world.  A  standard  is  set  up  by  which 
each  individual  is  to  be  tried.  The  smaller 
the  sect,  the  less  the  variation  usually  al- 
lowed from  the  received  type.  This  tem- 
per survives  the  rationalizing  process,  and 
is  seen  even  in  our  so-called  liberal 
churches;  and  we  find  some  of  them  still 
taking  pride  in  the  thought  that  they  are 


2O  "Members  of  One  Body" 

composed  exclusively  of  the  "best  people" 
of  their  respective  communities.  This 
"  leaven  of  the  Pharisees "  appears  in  all 
forms  of  sectarianism.  Indeed,  the  word 
"  Pharisee  "  (separated)  is  but  another  name 
for  the  self-absorbed  sectarian.  The  Cath- 
olic Church  is  broadly  tolerant  of  human 
nature.  It  has  a  place  for  its  philosophers 
and  moralists;  but  it  understands,  also,  the 
needs  of  those  to  whom  religion,  if  it  comes 
at  all,  must  come,  not  through  the  intel- 
lect, but  through  the  emotions  and  the 
senses.  It  has  a  message  to  the  eye  and 
the  ear  as  well  as  to  the  reason;  it  has 
learned  how  to  overawe  the  barbarian  by  its 
pageantry;  it  challenges  the  admiration  of 
the  soldier  by  its  matchless  discipline;  it 
appeals  to  the  artistic  temperament,  for 
Catholicism  is,  the  poetry  of  Christianity, 
as  Protestantism  is  its  prose;  it  captivates 
the  imagination  of  youth,  and  stimulates 
the  most  romantic  spiritual  ambition; 
and,  when  strength  and  earthly  hope  are 
dead,  it  offers  a  refuge  and  a  ministry  of 
consolation.  It  is  pre-eminently  the  relig- 
ion of  the  sorrowing,  not  teaching  them  to 


Roman  Catholicism  21 

underrate  their  sorrow  or  explain  it  away, 
but  investing  it  with  divine  meaning.  Its 
ritual  is  a  drama  unrivalled  in  its  intensity, 
leading  the  worshipper  by  slow,  sad  steps 
through  all  the  "stations  of  the  cross,"  to 
find  at  once  the  symbol  of  suffering  and  of 
salvation. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  Catholic 
Church  that  its  splendor  does  not  drive 
away  the  poor.  A  costly  Protestant  church 
suggests  a  rich  man's  house;  but  the  mag- 
nificence of  the  cathedral  suggests  the  glori- 
ous vault  of  the  sky,  beneath  which  all  are 
equal.  An  Italian  writer  has  well  said,  "It 
is  a  place  where  the  homeless  and  hungry, 
driven  from  the  rich  man's  table,  may  pray 
amid  marbles  and  gold,  as  in  a  kingdom 
where  he  is  not  disdained,  amid  a  pomp  and 
splendor  that  does  not  humiliate  him,  that 
even  honors  and  comforts  his  misery." 

In  like  manner,  the  Roman  hierarchy, 
rising  rank  above  rank,  has  done  much  for 
the  sentiment  of  equality  and  fraternity. 
In  ages  when  the  nobly  born  felt  that  they 
belonged  almost  to  another  race  from  the 
common  people,  the  Church  offered  an  op- 


22  "Members  of  One  Body" 

portunity  for  the  poor  man  to  gain  distinc- 
tion. In  the  never-to-be-forgotten  scene  at 
Canossa  we  may  now  see  only  an  exhibi- 
tion of  priestly  arrogance.  But  the  heart 
of  many  a  mediaeval  peasant  must  have  beat 
proudly  as  he  heard  the  tale  of  how  the  em- 
peror, clad  as  a  penitent,  shivered  for  three 
wintry  days  before  the  door  of  Hildebrand, 
the  son  of  a  village  carpenter;  and,  when 
Thomas  a  Becket  and  Wolsey  met  on  equal 
terms  with  the  Plantagenets  and  the  Tu- 
dors,  it  was  not  forgotten  that  these  great 
churchmen  were  great  commoners. 

We  Americans  boast  much  over  the  fact 
that  there  are  no  impassable  barriers  be- 
tween the  Presidency  and  the  remotest  coun- 
try school-house.  But  in  the  darkest  of  the 
feudal  ages  the  aspiring  peasant  lad  might 
cherish  still  more  dazzling  ambitions.  The 
secular  aristocracy  was  closed  against  him; 
but  there  was  a  spiritual  aristocracy,  and 
in  that  he  might  rise  from  rank  to  rank, 
till  at  last  he  might  look  down  on  kings 
and  emperors. 

With  all  its  great  services,  however,  the 
Catholic  Church  made  one  mistake  from 


Roman  Catholicism  23 

which  it  has  not  yet  recovered.  At  a  criti- 
cal time  in  its  history  it  proved  false  to 
its  own  principle  of  Catholicity.  In  the 
early  years  of  the  sixteenth  century  it  had 
no  more  devoted  servant  than  Martin 
Luther. 

If  the  pope  had  been  a  wise  man,  he 
would  have  called  the  German  reformer  to 
Rome,  and  said :  "  Brother  Martin,  a  new  day 
has  dawned,  and  we  must  make  ready  for 
its  work.  The  dust  and  cobwebs  of  time 
have  gathered  over  the  altar.  The  windows 
of  the  Church  are  so  begrimed  that  the 
light  of  heaven  can  scarcely  struggle 
through.  The  Church  must  be  thoroughly 
cleansed;  and  you,  with  your  burly 
strength,  are  the  man  to  do  it.  We  have 
had  crusading  orders  and  mendicant  and 
teaching  orders.  Now  let  us  organize  the 
Order  of  the  Holy  Broom,  which  shall 
sweep  away  all  these  old  abuses." 

But  Leo  X.  was  not  a  wise  man;  and  so, 
being  disturbed  in  his  private  plans,  he 
drove  Brother  Martin  out  of  the  Church. 
And  Brother  Martin,  not  being  allowed  to 
work  from  within,  did  the  only  thing  left 


24  "Members  of  One  Body" 

for  him :  he  threw  down  the  broom,  and  tak- 
ing up  the  hammer  began  to  batter  down 
the  church  walls;  and  so  the  great  Refor- 
mation culminated  in  the  great  schism. 

From  that  day  the  Church  ceased  to  be 
truly  Catholic,  and  became  Roman  Cath- 
olic; but,  though  dismembered,  it  still 
lives,  and  its  ideal  universality,  though  so 
imperfectly  realized,  is  its  greatest  charm. 
Its  relation  to  the  modern  world  is  like  that 
of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  to  the  Middle 
Ages.  It  is  at  once  the  survival  of  a  past 
greatness  and  the  prophecy  of  a  larger 
greatness  in  the  future.  When  the  world- 
empire  of  the  Coesars  had  been  overthrown, 
its  idea  still  haunted  the  mind.  Amid  the 
political  chaos  there  was  the  vision  of  a 
great  power  strong  enough  to  compel  order. 
In  its  old  form  the  empire  was  never  to  be 
re-established;  but  the  very  name  kept 
alive  the  thought  of  universal  law.  The 
dream  of  the  world-empire  may  yet  find  its 
fulfilment  in  a  world  federation. 

And  so  the  word  "Catholic,"  narrowed 
though  it  has  been  in  its  application,  is  a 
power  for  good.  It  rebukes  petty  sectarian 


Roman  Catholicism  25 

zeal,  and  recalls  the  high  ambition  to  build 
a  universal  church.  Looking  at  it  in  one 
way,  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  seems  but 
a  shadow  of  its  former  self;  but,  from  an- 
other standpoint,  it  appears  as  "a  shadow  of 
good  things  to  come."  It  has  nothing  to 
fear  from  sectarian  animosity.  Its  con- 
queror must  have  "its  secret  in  his  brain." 
It  will  yield  at  last  only  to  a  catholicity 
larger  than  its  own.  It  stands  like  a 
mountain,  and  sends  forth  the  mountain's 
challenge :  — 

"  Let  him  heed  who  can  or  will, 
Enchantment  fixed  me  here, 
To  stand  the  hurts  of  time  until 
In  mightier  chant  I  disappear." 

Some  day  that  mightier  chant  will  be 
heard,  as  worshippers  of  every  name  unite 
in  repeating,  with  fuller  meaning,  "We  be- 
lieve in  the  Holy  Catholic  Church." 


CALVINISM 


II. 

CALVINISM 

WHAT  has  Calvinism  done  for  the 
world?  In  order  to  answer  the 
question,  we  must  first  ask,  What  is  Cal- 
vinism? I  might  refer  to.  many  ponderous 
volumes  in  which  theological  definitions  are 
given;  but,  when  you  had  read  them  all, 
you  might  still  be  as  far  as  ever  from  the 
soul  which  once  animated  these  "bodies  of 
divinity."  Would  you  see  Calvinism  in 
the  flesh,  turn  to  Bunyan:  — 

"As  I  walked  through  the  wilderness  of 
the  world,  ...  I  saw  a  man  clothed  with 
rags,  standing  in  a  certain  place,  with  his 
face  from  his  own  house,  a  book  in  his  hand 
and  a  great  burden  upon  his  back.  I 
looked,  and  saw  him  open  the  book,  and  read 
therein;  and,  as  he  read,  he  wept  and 
trembled.  And,  not  being  able  longer  to 
contain,  he  brake  out  with  a  lamentable  cry, 
saying,  kWhat  shall  I  do?'" 


3O  "Members  of  One  Body" 

The  world  a  wilderness;  the  man  stand- 
ing with  his  back  to  his  own  house,  with  a 
great  burden  of  sin  weighing  him  down,  and 
yet  with  the  infallible  word  of  God  in  his 
hands, —  we  must  understand  what  all  these 
things  mean  if  we  would  understand  what 
Calvinism  was  when  it  was  a  living  power. 
How  that  "lamentable  cry"  rings  in  our 
ears!  It  is  the  cry  of  a  soul  conscious  of 
its  absolute  depravity,  brought  face  to  face 
with  the  transcendent  vision  of  divine 
purity.  What  is  Calvinism?  Perhaps  it 
would  be  better  to  use  the  past  tense;  for 
that  Calvinism  which  has  been  such  a 
mighty  force  has  of  late  been  so  modified 
as  to  lose  many  of  its  early  characteristics. 
Calvinism  was  the  very  sternest  form  which 
Christianity  has  ever  assumed,  and  in  its 
day  the  most  candid.  It  was  the  belief  that 
the  world  is  in  ruins,  that  man  is  by  nature 
utterly  depraved  and  destined  to  endless 
torment,  and  that  all  this  evil  was  decreed 
in  the  councils  of  eternity.  It  was  the  be- 
lief that  against  this,  our  frightful  destiny, 
we  struggle  in  vain :  our  utmost  endeavors 
are  powerless;  some  few  God  chooses,  not 


Calvinism  31 

for  anything  which  they  have  done  or  are, 
but  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  his  own  will, 
for  what  he  does,  he  deigns  no  other 
answer  than  that  it  is  for  his  own  glory: 
"The  rest  of  mankind  God  was  pleased,  ac- 
cording to  the  unsearchable  counsel  of  his 
own  will,  whereby  he  extendeth  or  with- 
holdeth  mercy  as  he  pleaseth,  for  the  glory 
of  his  sovereign  power  over  his  creatures,  to 
pass  by,  and  to  ordain  them  to  dishonor  and 
wrath  for  their  sin,  to  the  praise  of  his 
glorious  justice." 

Can  any  good  come  from  such  a  religion 
as  this?  Come  and  see.  Calvinism  is  like 
that  gloomy  forest  through  which  Dante 
wandered,  when  he  the  straight  way  had 
lost:  "Even  to  think  of  it  renews  the  fear: 
death  itself  could  scarcely  be  more  bitter." 
But  we  may  imitate  him:  "To  disclose  the 
good  that  there  I  found,  I  will  tell  what 
else  was  mine  to  see."  That  some  good 
has  come  from  Calvinism  every  one  must 
admit  who  is  willing  to  use  the  New  Testa- 
ment test, —  "By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know 
them." 

Reasoning  upon    general    principles,    we 


32  "Members  of  One  Body" 

might  say  that  a  religious  system  such  as 
I  have  described,  based  upon  the  doctrine 
of  arbitrary  sovereignty,  in  which  God  was 
conceived  of  as  a  despot  seated  on  his 
throne,  and  man  was  spoken  of  as  a  mere 
"worm  of  the  dust,"  would  be  one  which 
would  naturally  ally  itself  with  all  that  was 
reactionary  and  despotic  in  civilization. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  has  not  been  so. 
Calvinism  has  been  everywhere  the  stern 
nurse  of  human  freedom.  It  came  not  from 
despotic  Rome,  but  had  its  birth  in  repub- 
lican Geneva;  and  the  same  men  who  have 
declared  most  unflinchingly  the  arbitrary 
character  of  divine  government  have  been 
those  who  have  fought  most  bravely  for 
human  liberty.  Follow  the  stream  of  Cal- 
vinistic  influence  through  the  civilized 
world,  and  what  do  we  find?  When  France 
was  half  Calvinist,  France  was  half  free. 
Louis  XIV.  knew  full  well  that  the  greatest 
enemies  to  the  unlimited  despotism  which 
he  would  establish  were  the  French  Calvin- 
ists,  the  fellow-believers  as  well  as  the 
fellow-countrymen  of  Calvin.  So  he  with- 
drew the  edict  of  toleration,  and  that  which 


Calvinism  33 

has  been  France's  loss  has  been  the  gain  of 
the  rest  of  Europe.  Follow  the  struggle 
since  then  in  England  and  America,  and 
you  will  find  in  the  very  forefront  of  the 
battle  for  constitutional  liberty  men  with 
French  names.  The  descendants  of  the 
Huguenots  may  have  forgotten  their  fathers' 
creed;  but,  wherever  they  have  gone,  they 
have  carried  with  them  the  instinctive  love 
of  liberty  and  the  hatred  of  all  oppression. 
Follow  that  Calvinistic  race  which  we  call 
Scotch-Irish  in  their  migrations  to  the  New 
World,  carrying  with  them,  as  most  of  them 
have,  the  Calvinistic  creed,  carrying,  as  all 
of  them  have,  the  Calvinistic  inheritance, 
and  you  will  find  them,  too,  fighting  always 
on  the  side  of  civil  and  religious  freedom. 
For  the  brief  space  of  time  when  England's 
Westminster  Hall  was  freed  from  the 
shadow  of  royalty,  one  notable  event  hap- 
pened. Then  the  Westminster  Confession 
of  Faith  was  born,  and  not  by  an  accident, 
did  it  come  in  that  moment  of  civil  liberty. 
We  read  those  words  of  the  old  Calvinists 
in  which  they  declare  that  the  will  of  man 
is  feeble,  that  the  struggling  of  man  can  do 


34  "Members  of  One  Body" 

nothing,  and  that  all  comes  by  an  arbitrary 
decree  to  us,  the  worms  of  the  dust;  and 
we  say,  as  we  read,  "That  is  a  fit  creed  for 
slaves  to  accept  and  to  follow."  Turn  to 
the  actual  fact,  and  who  were  these  men 
who  professed  this  creed  and  who  spoke 
thus  disparagingly  of  themselves?  Who 
were  these  men  that  fought  this  battle  of 
Calvinism  in  Europe  and  America?  Ad- 
miral Coligny,  William  the  Silent,  John 
Knox  who  never  feared  the  face  of  man, 
sturdy  Miles  Standish  and  Oliver  Cromwell, 
—  these  were  the  Calvinists.  What  glorious 
worms  of  the  dust  these  were !  Would  that 
our  thought  of  the  dignity  of  humanity 
could  bring  to  the  world  such  men,  ready 
to  do  all  and  to  dare  all!  Would  that, 
when  we  speak  of  the  freedom  of  the 
will,  we  could  nerve  the  will  with  such 
divine  courage  as  theirs!  These  men, 
who  talked  a  language  we  scarce  can  under- 
stand, who  looked  at  the  world  through 
eyes  other  than  ours,  may  have  been  worms 
of  the  dust;  but  they  made  great  mis- 
takes who  thought  they  were  the  kind 
of  worms  that  could  be  trodden  on.  They 


Calvinism  35 

were  the  men  everywhere  who  made  this 
free  civilization  of  ours,  and  it  is  into 
their  blood-bought  heritage  that  we  enter. 
We  may  disagree  with  them,  we  may  say 
they  were  mistaken;  but  we  dare  not  de- 
spise them  or  despise  their  thought. 

The  creed  of  Calvinism,  as  I  read  it, 
seems  to  mean  the  captivity  of  the  human 
mind;  and  yet,  as  I  recall  the  deeds  of 
these  old  Calvinists,  the  bold  Hebrew 
words  come  to  me,  "They  have  taken  their 
captivity  captive."  The  very  thoughts 
which  seem  to  us,  not  looking  at  their 
deeds,  to  mean  despotism  meant  the  arms 
by  which  freedom  was  achieved;  and  so  I 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  there  must  be 
something  more  in  Calvinism  than  with  a 
superficial  view  we  have  seen, —  that  there 
must  be  a  deeper  meaning,  a  more  abiding 
spirit,  in  that  which  wrought  such  great 
things  for  us  all.  I  cannot  believe  the  old 
theosophic  doctrine  that  our  personalities 
are  not  truly  our  own,  but  that  life  goes  on 
through  successive  reincarnations  of  the  in- 
dividual; but  this  much  I  do  see:  that  ideas 
are  continually  reincarnated,  that  now  in 


36  "Members  of  One  Body" 

one  form  and  now  in  another  the  great  es- 
sential powers  of  the  human  mind  come 
into  play,  their  earlier  life  all  but  forgot- 
ten, and,  as  a  new  birlh  in  the  realm  of 
humanity,  the  old  spirit  reappears.  So 
life  forces  are  continually  reincarnated, 
failing  in  the  old  religion,  coming  again  in 
the  new  form.  And  so  manly  courage  and 
sincerity  are  born  anew  in  the  religious 
world.  What  we  call  Calvinism  was  the 
old  Roman  Stoicism  born  again  into  Chris- 
tianity. It  was  the  bravest,  most  logical 
and  fearless  form  in  which  orthodox  Chris- 
tianity has  ever  been  manifested.  That 
which  seems  to  me  the  essential  thing  in 
Calvinism,  and  that  which  is  eternal,  is  the 
intellectual  sincerity  which  belonged  to  it 
in  its  early  days,  and  which  gave  it  the  in- 
fluence it  had  over  the  strongest  minds  of 
Christendom.  It  was  this  absolute  devo- 
tion to  truth,  as  then  it  was  seen,  that  gave 
it  power. 

There  have  been  many  forms  of  religion 
which  have  sought  simply  to  find  the  beau- 
tiful things  and  pleasant  things  in  life,  and, 
taking  them,  to  make  them  sacred,  and,  ac- 


Calvinism  37 

cepting  what  was  but  half-truth,  to  make  out 
of  that  a  beautiful  faith.  It  is  the  faith  of 
tender  sentiment.  It  is  the  faith  of  those 
who  are  shielded  from  the  world.  It  is 
never  the  faith  of  strong  men,  never  the 
faith  of  warriors,  never  the  faith  of  states- 
men, who  have  to  meet  face  to  face  the  evil 
as  well  as  the  good.  This  world  of  ours  is 
not  altogether  a  pleasant  place.  Much  as 
we  may  believe  that  the  heart  of  the  world  is 
love,  yet  there  are  claws  and  teeth  to  nat- 
ure. There  is  blood  and  strife  and  sorrow 
here,  and  serious  men  know  it;  and,  when 
religion  is  serious,  it  faces  the  fact.  Re- 
ligion is  not  always  serious,  and  not  always 
in  the  serious  mood  do  men  go  to  the  place 
of  worship.  And  so  we  have  beautiful  rit- 
ualisms and  beautiful  half  rationalisms,  and 
so  we  have  prophets  who  say  smooth  things, 
and  do  not  dare  to  face  the  ultimate  conse- 
quences of  their  own  creeds;  and  so  under 
pomp  of  ceremony  the  harder  facts  of  life 
are  simply  put  aside,  and  in  the  courts  of 
religion  men  come  to  say,  All  is  well,  even 
though  they  know  that  the  enemy  is  at  the 
gate.  Even  Luther  himself,  with  all  his 


38  "Members  of  One  Body" 

moral  fearlessness,  had  not  that  intellectual 
courage  which  the  times  demanded.  Some 
of  his  compromises  were  at  the  expense  of 
consistency.  Calvin,  the  young  lawyer  of 
France,  brought  his  clear  mind  to  bear  on 
the  problems  of  theology;  and  this  is  what 
he  said  in  effect  to  the  men  of  the  sixteenth 
century :  — 

"  Friends,  let  us  be  absolutely  candid,  let 
us  take  our  religion  seriously.  We  have 
broken  away  from  the  authority  of  church 
tradition,  and  appealed  to  the  Word  of  God. 
Let  us  not  be  like  children,  choosing  only 
what  pleases  us;  but  let  us  face  the  whole 
truth.  On  some  things  we  agree.  We  be- 
lieve, or  say  that  we  believe,  that  every 
word  of  these  Scriptures  is  infallible,  and 
that  here  we  have  the  sole  authority  in  re- 
ligion. Let  us  then  take  it  as  it  is,  and 
follow  implicitly  where  it  leads.  This 
Bible  of  ours  has  many  beautiful  things  in 
it.  It  speaks  of  the  divine  love,  but  just 
as  surely  does  it  speak  of  the  divine  hate. 
It  says  that  God  has  hated  some  of  his 
creatures  with  such  quenchless  hatred  that 
he  will  follow  them  with  burning  torments 


Calvinism  39 

for  all  eternity.  Their  lives  will  be  pro- 
longed infinitely,  in  order  that  his  infinite 
wrath  may  be  manifested. 

"We  know,  or  think  we  know,  the  power 
and  freedom  of  our  own  wills;  but  back  of 
the  human  will  is  law,  and  back  of  law  is 
the  higher  will,  the  Eternal.  You  say  that 
God  wills  some  to  be  saved  and  dwell  in 
light,  and  there  are  others  who  are  not 
saved.  We  all  believe  that.  But  God 
does  not  will  the  destruction  of  any,  you 
say.  Ah!  seriously,  now,  is  not  that  in- 
volved in  our  doctrine?  If  there  is  that 
eternal  hell  and  there  are  those  that  shall 
go  thither,  can  you  evade  the  thought  that 
God  sent  them  there?  God  made  them  to 
suffer.  God  created  them  for  that.  Hor- 
rible thought,  you  say.  Yes,  to  me,  also; 
for  I  am  a  man.  To  me,  also,  it  is  cause 
for  trembling,  because  I  know  not  who  are 
those  decreed.  But  it  is  written  so.  God 
says  so;  and,  if  we  are  to  obey,  if  we  are  to 
believe,  let  us  have  no  half-measures.  Let 
us  face  the  ultimate  reality,  let  us  see  the 
worst.  Man  sins,  man  always  has  sinned: 
do  you  say  he  can  do  differently?  I  tell 


40  "Members  of  One  Body  " 

you  that  his  life  is  just  as  much  bound  up 
in  the  universal  life  as  the  movements  of 
the  atoms  and  their  attractions.  Struggle 
as  he  will,  he  cannot  help  it.  And  yet  he 
suffers,  yet  he  is  accounted  guilty,  yet  he  is 
to  be  condemned  eternally  for  that  which  he 
cannot  help.  Unjust,  you  say?  Yes.  So 
I  feel,  for  I  am  a  man;  and  yet  this  Word 
says  so.  God  says  so.  God  made  the 
world,  made  us.  Why  did  he  do  it?  I  do 
not  know.  I  only  declare  the  fact.  I  only 
speak  to  you  as  the  man  of  science  speaks 
in  bringing  together  the  result  of  his  study. 
He  says  this  is  so.  You  ask  him  why:  he 
says,  'I  do  not  know,  no  man  knows  why.' 
And  yet  we  know  God  is  just,  and  base  our 
life  on  that.  It  is  better  to  believe  that 
than  to  doubt  it.  So  I  believe  that  beneath 
this  great  injustice,  this  apparent  unreason- 
ableness, there  is  the  reason  and  justice 
that  is  infinite."  Such  was  the  word  of 
Calvinism.  Do  you  wonder  that  men  who 
believed  that  conquered  half  Europe?  Do 
you  wonder  that  men  who  believed  that 
were  not  afraid  of  what  King  Philip  and  his 
inquisition  could  do?  They  had  already 


Calvinism  41 

faced  the  very  darkest  side  of  things,  and 
yet  they  believed;  and,  though  reason  pro- 
tested, though  the  heart  bled,  yet  they 
trusted  God.  Do  you  think  it  was  an  easy 
thing  for  Jonathan  Edwards  to  preach  that 
terrible  sermon  on  "Sinners  in  the  Hands 
of  an  Angry  God "  ?  You  say,  when  you 
read  it,  "What  a  hard-hearted  man  he  was!" 
I  say  rather  what  a  brave  man  he  was,  who, 
believing  that,  dared  say  it,  and  say  it 
simply  because  to  him  it  was  true. 

Such  was  Calvinism  when  it  was  not  a 
creed  to  be  coolly  revised,  but  was  received 
as  a  statement  of  the  ultimate  realities  of 
existence.  It  was  not  a  bugbear  to  fright 
the  ignorant,  but  a  pitiless  deduction  from 
universally  accepted  premises.  The  Cal- 
vinist  differed  from  other  Christians  of  the 
day  only  in  that  his  logic  was  more  inex- 
orable. He  saw  and  stated  all  that  is 
involved  in  the  evangelical  scheme  of  salva- 
tion. As  long  as  the  fundamental  assump- 
tions of  this  scheme  were  unquestioned, 
Calvinism  ruled  over  the  best  minds  of  the 
world. 

Weak  men  and  women  would   say,  "Oh, 


42  "Members  of  One  Body" 

but  it  is  not  pleasant,  it  is  not  beautiful,  it 
is  not  popular."  "We  go  with  religion,'* 
Bunyan's  man  of  the  world  would  say, 
"when  she  walks  in  the  sunshine  in  her  sil- 
ver slippers."  "Nay,"  said  Christian  and 
Hopeful,  "we  go  with  religion  in  all 
weathers,  and  wait  not  for  wind  and  tide." 
These  were  the  men  who  walked  through 
the  Valley  of  Humiliation,  and  who  found  a 
key  th?t  unlocked  at  last  for  them  even  the 
dungeon  of  Giant  Despair,  who  saw  the 
worst  that  human  thought  could  give,  who 
faced  that  which  made  weaker  men  despair, 
and  yet  found  hope  and  courage  even  to  the 
end. 

And  this  seriousness  of  Calvinism  which 
made  it  a  power  is  seen  in  the  kind  of 
questions  which  Calvinism  asked.  The 
most  characteristic  work  of  Calvinism,  and 
that  which  remains  longest,  is  the  Shorter 
Catechism  of  the  Westminster  divines. 
Many  of  the  answers  to  that  catechism  are 
strangely  obsolete  now.  They  no  longer 
commend  themselves  to  the  kind  of  minds 
that  made  that  catechism,  but  commend 
themselves  rather  to  those  who  are  blind  to 


Calvinism  4  3 

the  facts  of  the  present  day.  But  the  ques- 
tions remain,  and  the  questions  have  been 
the  power  which  have  made  Calvinism  po- 
tent among  thinking  men.  It  is  not  easy 
to  ask  great  questions;  and  much  of  church 
religion  has  often  consisted  in  evading 
great  questions  rather  than  in  asking  them. 
Not  so  with  Calvinism.  The  questions  of 
the  Westminster  Catechism  are  the  ques- 
tions of  the  Sphinx.  They  voice  the  eter- 
nal questionings  of  the  soul  of  man :  they 
challenge  the  intellect  of  the  ages.  It  is 
because  the  questions  were  so  great  that  the 
answers  no  longer  satisfy.  "What  is  the 
chief  end  of  man?  What  is  God?  What 
are  the  decrees  of  God?  How  doth  God  ex- 
ecute his  decrees?  What  is  effectual  call- 

ing?" 

Think  what  it  meant  for  generations  of 
men  to  be  confronted  with  such  questions. 
Other  forms  of  religion  may  be  uninflu- 
enced by  scientific  discoveries,  because  they 
do  not  occupy  a  field  wherein  they  can  come 
in  conflict  with  serious  thought.  But  Cal- 
vinism in  its  solemn  truth-telling  cannot 
evade  the  issue  which  new  truth  brings. 


44  "Members  of  One  Body" 

The  man  who  asks,  "What  is  the  chief  end 
of  man  ?  "  has  asked  the  fundamental  ques- 
tion of  ethics.  He  cannot  but  be  influ- 
enced by  every  step  in  ethical  development. 
He  who  to-day  asks,  "  How  doth  God  exe-,' 
cute  his  decrees?"  cannot  be  indifferent  to 
what  natural  science  has  to  say  on  the  sub- 
ject. The  great  influence  of  Calvinism  has 
been  to  set  men  thinking.  It  has  given 
them  the  courage  of  their  convictions.  It 
has  exalted  logic,  and  accustomed  men  to 
use  it  in  religion.  We  need  not  then  be 
surprised  that,  where  Calvinism  has  been 
most  intense,  the  old  Calvinistic  creed  has 
at  length  broken  down.  It  is  the  spirit 
bursting  the  bonds  of  its  forms.  'So  Cal- 
vin's Geneva  has  long  been  the  seat  of  lib- 
eralism, and  the  new  theology  gained  its 
first  triumphs  in  Puritan  Boston.  Nothing 
could  be  wider  apart  than  the  answers  of 
Emerson  from  those  of  the  Westminster 
divines ;  but  the  questionings  are  the  same. 
Like  a  true  child  of  the  Calvinists,  he  is 
still  pondering 

"  The  fate  of  the  man-child, 
The  meaning  of  man." 


Calvinism  45 

And,  when  the  old  answers  do  not  satisfy, 
he  does  not  turn  away,  but  waits  in  reverent 
silence. 

"  Alway  it  asketh,  asketh  ; 
And  each  answer  is  a  lie. 

Ask  on,  thou  clothed  eternity; 
Time  is  the  false  reply." 

As  in  Bunyan  we  have  Calvinism  in  the 
flesh,  so  in  these  lines  we  have  Calvinism  as 
a  disembodied  spirit.  The  solid  mass  of 
dogma  has  dissolved;  but,  in  its  place,  we 
recognize  a  certain  spiritual  attitude  and 
expectation.  The  soul  of  the  old  faith 
remains.  It  has  learned  the  meekness  of 
wisdom  through  its  past  disappointments, 
but  it  has  lost  nothing  of  its  serious  pur- 
pose. Baffled  for  the  time  in  its  attempts 
to  solve  the  mystery  of  its  own  destiny, 
it  loses  nothing  of  heart  or  hope,  but  still 
believes  that  eternity  contains  the  answers 
to  the  eternal  questionings  of  the  heart. 

We  may  trace  the  influence  of  the  austere 
discipline  of  Calvinism  upon  all  the  great 
religious  leaders  of  our  time.  Its  good  is 
"a  good  diffused."  Here,  rather  than  in 


46  "Members  of  One  Body  " 

the  professedly  Calvinistic  churches,  we 
may  follow  the  line  of  spiritual  succession; 
for  it  would  seem  that  the  brave  old  spirit 
has  in  our  day  almost  forsaken  its  old  tene- 
ments. The  recent  attempts  made  to  revise 
the  Westminster  Confession  are  significant, 
for  they  betray  the  full  extent  of  the  eccle- 
siastical degeneracy.  To  soften  here  and 
there  a  phrase,  to  conceal  the  full  force  of 
an  argument,  to  leave  vague  some  harsh  de- 
duction from  an  admitted  premise,  to  evade 
a  difficulty  rather  than  to  squarely  meet  it, 
to  seek  plausibility  rather  than  reality, 
these  are  congenial  tasks  for  Mr.  By-ends 
of  Fair  Speech  and  his  good  friends,  Mr. 
Smooth-man,  Mr.  Facing-both-ways,  and 
Mr.  Anything.  For  compromise  with  prin- 
ciple comes  naturally  to  Mr.  By-ends,  as 
he  tells  us,  "My  great-grandfather  was  a 
waterman,  looking  one  way  and  rowing  an- 
other; and  I  got  most  of  my  estate  by  the 
same  occupation."  But  this  fits  not  the 
temper  of  the  man  with  the  burden  on  his 
back  and  the  book  in  his  hand.  By  sad  ex- 
perience, he  has  learned  to  distrust  easy 
solutions  of  great  problems,  and  hastens  on 


Calvinism  47 

through  the  difficult  to  the  true.  "Then 
Christian  and  Hopeful  outwent  them  again, 
and  went  on  till  they  came  to  a  delicate 
plain  called  Ease,  where  they  went  through 
with  much  content ;  but  that  plain  was  but 
narrow,  so  they  were  quickly  got  over  it." 

He  who  has  caught  the  spirit  of  the  old 
Calvinism  will  not  linger  long  on  the  "del- 
icate plain,"  where  churchmen  are  engaged 
in  smoothing  down  a  creed  which  at  heart 
they  have  ceased  to  believe.  The  only 
question  for  him  is,  Is  it  true?  If  it  is,  let 
it  be  preached  in  its  integrity,  nor  let  its 
sternest  outlines  be  concealed.  Let  the 
whole  counsel  of  God  be  proclaimed  with- 
out equivocation.  But,  if  it  is  not  found 
true,  when  subjected  to  the  severest  tests, 
let  us  hasten  onward,  no  matter  what  val- 
leys of  humiliation  or  hills  of  difficulty  or 
doubting  castles  may  await  us. 

And  all  of  us  must  catch  this  spirit  if  we 
would  enter  into  the  heritage  which  the 
men  of  old  have  left  us.  We  may  not 
share  their  doctrines;  but,  if  we  would  do 
our  part,  we  must  share  their  sincerity  and 
earnestness.  The  old  problems  come  to  us 


48  "Members  of  One  Body  " 

in  different  forms,  and  our  answers  must  be 
in  different  phraseology.  But  of  one  thing 
we  may  be  certain,  and  that  is  that  only 
when  we  face  our  problems  with  a  courage 
as  indomitable  as  that  of  the  early  Calvin- 
ists  will  any  worthy  answer  be  possible. 

The  world  has  yet  work  for  men  who, 
facing  the  worst,  yet  believe  in  the  best, 
and  who,  looking  up  to  the  Eternal,  can  say, 
" Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  him." 
The  world  needs  men  who  believe  in  their 
own  "effectual  calling  "  to  do  God's  work, 
and  who  are  willing  to  do  it  in  obedience  to 
those  great  laws  which  are  not  of  their  own 
making.  The  religion  of  the  future  will  be 
more  humane,  more  tender,  more  rational, 
than  the  old  Calvinism;  but  it  must  not  be 
less  earnest  and  devoted. 


METHODISM 


III. 

METHODISM 

THE  inhabitants  of  the  valleys  of  South- 
ern California,  when  asked  to  tell  us 
the  reason  for  their  climatic  blessedness, 
give  equal  credit  to  the  mountains  and  the 
sea.  The  great  ranges  that  lie  behind, 
they  tell  us,  cut  off  the  chilly  breezes  of 
the  north,  and  the  warm  ocean  currents 
temper  the  winter  air. 

We  have  already  considered  one  of  the 
causes  which  have  modified  the  religious 
climate  of  our  age.  It  is  that  rugged 
mountain  range  that  lies  behind  us,  which 
we  call  Calvinism.  Let  us  now  consider 
what  we  owe  to  that  warm  ocean  current 
which  is  known  as  Methodism. 

To  understand  Methodism,  we  must  go 
back  to  its  beginning.  Let  us  go  into  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  enter 
the  parish  church  of  Epworth.  The  curate 


52  "Members  of  One  Body" 

is  preaching  on  a  very  popular  theme  of 
that  day,  "The  Evils  of  Enthusiasm."  As 
the  congregation  goes  out  of  the  church,  it 
is  whispered  that  the  son  of  the  former 
minister,  who,  being  suspected  of  the  sin 
of  enthusiasm,  is  forbidden  the  use  of  his 
father's  pulpit,  is  to  preach  that  evening  in 
the  churchyard. 

What  follows  let  John  Wesley  himself 
tell:  "That  evening  at  six  o'clock  I  came 
and  found  such  a  congregation  as  I  believe 
Epworth  never  saw  before.  I  stood  near 
the  east  end  of  the  church  upon  my  father's 
tombstone,  and  I  cried  aloud,  4The  king- 
dom of  God  is  not  meat  and  drink,  but 
righteousness  and  peace  and  joy  in  the 
Holy  Ghost.'  ...  As  I  preached,  on  every 
side  as  with  one  accord  they  lifted  up  their 
voices  and  cried  aloud.  Several  dropped 
down  as  dead;  but  many  soon  lifted  up 
their  heads  with  joy  and  broke  into  thanks- 
giving, assured  that  now  they  had  the  de- 
sire of  their  souls,  even  the  forgiveness  of 
sins."  A  strange  phenomenon  that  to  the 
good  curate,  and  clearly  against  the  peace 
and  dignity  of  the  Church  of  England;  for, 


Methodism  5  3 

if  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  not  meat  and 
drink,  or  at  least  is  not  intended  princi- 
pally as  a  means  of  providing  meat  and 
drink  for  the  reverend  clergy  and  their  fam- 
ilies, then  there  must  be  something  wrong 
with  the  Church  of  England,  then  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  must  be  something  different 
from  the  Church, —  an  idea  not  to  be  allowed. 
It  was  the  age  when  Jonathan  Swift  was  the 
dean  of  St.  Patrick's  and  when  the  Rev. 
Laurence  Sterne  divided  his  time  between 
writing  sermons  and  his  "  Sentimental  Jour- 
ney," and  when  Fielding  found  in  too  many 
a  country  parish  models  for  his  earthly- 
minded  parson,  Trulliber.  It  was,  in 
short,  in  the  very  middle  of  the  great  en- 
lightened eighteenth  century, —  a  time  when 
it  was  understood  that  religion  henceforth 
was  to  be  tolerated;  but  it  was  not  to  be 
treated  any  longer  as  an  elemental  force, 
but  as  an  elegant  though  a  somewhat  tire- 
some conventionality. 

On  one  point  all  sensible  men  were 
agreed, —  that  there  should  be  no  enthusiasm 
in  religion.  One  great  commandment  over- 
shadowed all  else:  "Let  all  things  be  done 


54  "Members  of  One  Body" 

decently  and  in  order."  Next  to  this  was 
another  great  commandment :  "  The  Powers 
that  be  are  ordained  of  God."  The  Church 
was  the  patient  Griselda  married  to  the 
State,  and  she  must  have  no  will  of  her 
own.  The  brave  old  text  about  the  gospel 
being  "the  power  of  God"  was  not  often 
quoted,  nor  was  it  much  believed. 

One  of  the  popular  sermons  of  the  day, 
published  by  a  certain  London  doctor  of 
divinity,  has  this  title:  "The  Nature,  Folly, 
Sin,  and  Danger  of  being  Righteous  Over- 
much." The  intellect  of  the  Church  was 
then  engaged  largely  in  discussing  the 
"evidences  of  Christianity,"  but  it  is  char- 
acteristic of  the  time  that  these  evidences 
were  all  in  the  past.  It  never  seemed  to 
enter  the  heads  of  these  wise  churchmen 
that  religion  might  possibly  be  self-evi- 
dencing. The  evidences  were  all  docu- 
mentary. Long  ago  miracles  happened,  it 
was  believed;  and  God  spake  to  men,  and 
then  ceased  to  speak.  Now  faith  consists 
in  accepting  the  testimony  of  the  Fathers  as 
it  has  been  preserved  for  us  in  the  Church. 
Fielding  tells  us  of  the  religion  of  Chaplain 


Methodism  55 

Thwackum,  and  of  his  arguments  with  the 
heretic,  Square,  and  he  says  the  clergyman 
"decided  everything  by  authority;  but  he 
always  used  the  Scriptures  as  the  lawyer 
doth  his  Coke  upon  Littleton,  where  the 
comment  is  of  equal  authority  with  the  text." 
It  was  into  this  age  that  John  Wes- 
ley came,  and  with  him  the  phenomenon  of 
Methodism.  Beginning  in  a  little  band  in 
Oxford,  it  spread  soon  over  the  United 
Kingdom  and  the  world.  Men  were  aston- 
ished to  find  that  in  religion  the  age  of  mir- 
acles had  not  passed,  that  still  in  lowliest 
men  and  women  there  was  something,  call 
it  faith,  call  it  what  you  will,  which  re- 
sponded to  the  man  speaking  with  that 
greatest  of  all  authority, —  the  authority  of 
an  inward  conviction  of  the  truth  of  his  own 
message.  The  one  thing  which  was  greatly 
characteristic  of  Methodism,  and  which  dif- 
ferentiated it  from  the  religion  of  the  time, 
was  not  its  doctrine.  Wesley  had  no  new 
doctrine  to  preach.  Such  doctrine  as  he 
did  preach  was  in  many  respects  less  ad- 
vanced than  the  best  thought  of  his  time. 
He  believed  in  witches,  and  was  sur- 


56  "Members  of  One  Body" 

rounded  all  the  time  by  a  supernatural  at- 
mosphere. His  teachings  were  often  nar- 
row, and  not  adapted  to  the  very  finest 
minds;  but  his  power  lay  in  this, —  that  he 
had  grasped,  and  as  no  other  man  in  Eng- 
land had  grasped,  the  idea  that  religion  is 
not  a  doctrine  at  all,  not  something  to  be 
held  apart  from  the  man,  but  it  is  the 
power  of  a  personality  consciously  touched 
by  the  Eternal.  He  preached  the  necessity 
of  a  personal  experience  of  religion.  Ac- 
cording to  the  scheme  of  Calvinism,  the 
destiny  of  the  soul  was  determined  in  the 
councils  of  eternity  before  the  foundation 
of  the  world;  and  the  individual  must  wait 
till  the  far  judgment  day  before  he  can 
surely  know  what  his  destiny  is.  To  Wes- 
ley the  past  and  future  eternities  were 
crowded  into  one  decisive  moment.  In  that 
moment  the  man  might  choose  God  and 
enjoy  him.  He  need  not  wait  for  death 
in  order  to  enter  heaven,  nor  for  the  judg- 
ment day  to  be  sure  of  his  salvation.  The 
whole  gospel  is  translated  into  the  present 
tense.  All  the  divine  promises  may  be 
verified  by  an  act  of  consciousness. 


Methodism  $7 

For  its  emphasis  upon  feeling  Metho- 
dism has  been  criticised,  and  to  a  certain 
extent  justly.  Its  introspection  has  some- 
times been  morbid,  and  its  desire  for  per- 
sonal salvation  has  sometimes  been  selfish. 

But  at  heart  Wesley  was  right.  When 
he  came  back  from  his  ill-starred  voyage  to 
America,  whither  he  went  to  convert  the 
Indians,  he  said  that  the  one  result  of  it  all 
was  to  convince  him  that,  whereas  he  had 
gone  forth  to  convert  the  Indians,  he  had 
not  been  converted  himself.  Wesley  was 
right  in  thinking  that  no  man  can  help 
others  any  further  than  he  has  himself  been 
helped.  No  man  can  give  to  others  any 
higher  religion  than  he  has  himself  experi- 
enced. He  may  talk  about  it,  preach  about 
it,  define  it,  but  never  can  he  help  another 
soul  to  any  higher  level  than  that  on  which 
he  himself  stands;  and,  in  seeing  this, 
Wesley  differed  from  all  the  self-compla- 
cent parsons  of  England,  who  imagined  that 
by  preaching  the  articles  of  their  Church 
and  living  as  they  pleased  they  were  doing 
God's  work,  and  were  his  ministers. 

But,    though    it  began    in    introspection, 


58  "Members  of  One  Body" 

Methodism  has  been  eminently  social  in  its 
development.  Wesley  grasped  the  thought 
that  righteousness,  peace,  and  joy  in  the 
Holy  Ghost  might  spread  through  a  whole 
nation  as  by  contagion.  The  first  thing 
was  to  find  some  faithful  souls  who, 
though  they  might  not  be  able  to  define  re- 
ligion, had  experienced  it.  These  men  he 
commissioned;  and  they  went  up  and  down 
through  England,  to  the  coal  mines  and  the 
furnaces,  to  all  places  where  men  were 
herded  together,  and  told  what  God  had 
done  for  them.  And  rude  hearts  were 
touched,  and  vast  multitudes  responded  to 
the  word  of  faith.  This  miracle  happened 
in  England  a  century  ago,  and  the  influence 
of  that  great  revival  has  spread  through  all 
the  world.  There  is  not  a  corner  of  the 
civilized  world  that  has  not  been  touched 
by  this  new  manifestation  of  Christianity. 

What  do  we  owe  to  Methodism?  That  is 
a  hard  question  to  answer.  Much  easier 
would  it  be  to  answer  the  other  question, 
What  do  we  not  owe  to  Methodism?  Meth- 
odism in  the  churches  which  Wesley 
founded,  or  rather  which  grew  unintention- 


Methodism  59 

ally  out  of  those  simple  societies  which  he 
established,  is  the  most  powerful  ecclesias- 
tical organization  to-day  in  Protestantism, 
the  one  most  full  of  vitality.  But  these 
Methodist  societies  are  simply  as  the  wire 
along  which  the  electric  energy  travels;  but 
the  energy  which  charged  that  wire  is  too 
great  for  it  to  carry,  and  so  it  has  found 
other  conductors,  and  it  has  touched  all 
churches,  all  organizations  of  the  religious 
world.  Even  our  Unitarian  churches  have 
been  astonished  and  transformed  when  it 
has  touched  them  with  a  new  idea  of  what 
liberal  Christianity  may  be.  New  England 
Unitarianism  is  simply  a  developed  Calvin- 
ism, coming  from  a  people  characterized  by 
the  Calvinistic  temper,  seeking  first  for  an 
opinion,  a  clear  statement,  rather  than  an 
experience.  When  we  wish  to  broaden  out, 
we  broaden  out  according  to  the  Calvinistic 
method,  by  trying  to  revise  our  statements. 
We  follow  in  our  development  of  liberalism 
intellectual  lines.  The  text  we  love  most 
is,  "The  truth  shall  make  you  free."  A 
great  text  that;  for  the  truth  does  make  us 
free,  if  we  follow  it  far  enough.  But  it  is 


6o  "Members  of  One  Body" 

a  long  way  sometimes.  A  minister  came 
to  the  family  of  Jonathan  Edwards.  When 
he  went  away,  he  said,  "I  suspect  that  Mrs. 
Edwards  has  found  a  shorter  way  to  heaven 
than  her  husband."  So  I  suspect  that 
Methodism  finds  a  shorter  way  to  true  lib- 
eralism than  the  intellectual  way  which  the 
Calvinist,  by  inheritance  or  by  creed,  must 
of  necessity  follow.  "The  truth  shall 
make  you  free,"  is  a  great  text;  but  here  is 
an  equally  great  one:  "Where  the  spirit  of 
the  Lord  is,  there  is  liberty."  There  is 
liberty  without  defining  it.  There  is  lib- 
erty as  a  fact  and  as  an  experience.  We 
Unitarians  hardly  knew  what  the  possibili- 
ties of  genial,  warm-loving  fellowship  were 
until  the  Methodist  Robert  Collyer  came 
among  us. 

The  liberal  ministers  of  Boston  preached 
long  and  well  against  intolerance,  showing 
how  unscriptural  and  how  unreasonable  it 
was.  And  at  length  the  old  dogmatism 
burst  its  shell;  but  it  was,  like  the  opening 
of  the  chestnut  burr,  accelerated  by  frost. 
But  the  ejaculatory  prayer  of  Father  Tay- 
lor, "Lord,  save  us  from  bigotry  and  bad 


Methodism  61 

rum:  thou  knowest  which  is  worse,"  was 
more  effective  than  all  their  arguments. 
That  was  characteristic  of  Methodism. 
The  word  of  Wesley  was,  "Preach  not 
against  opinions,  but  against  sins."  When 
a  Methodist  comes  to  see  that  bigotry  is  a 
sin,  he  fights  against  it  in  the  same  fervent, 
whole-souled  way  in  which  he  fights  against 
bad  rum. 

The  influence  of  Methodism  was  powerful 
in  making  the  great  political  and  social 
revolution  that  was  inevitable  in  England  a 
peaceful  one.  A  writer  in  the  early  part  of 
this  century  laments  the  fact  that  Method- 
ism taught  the  working  classes  the  secret 
of  organized  effort.  Its  class  meetings 
were  training-schools  for  the  trades-unions. 
In  this  social  education  we  now  see  a  great 
work  for  good. 

The  eighteenth  century  felt  beneath  all 
its  conventionality  the  incoming  of  a  great 
wave.  In  France,  where  religion  had  lost 
its  force,  the  wave  came  on,  and  broke  in 
terror  on  the  land. 

Go  to  England  at  that  same  time,  and 
you  see  many  of  the  same  conditions.  The 


62  "Members  of  One  Body" 

working  class  has  become  conscious  of  it- 
self. Great  multitudes,  thirty  thousand 
sometimes  in  one  place,  come  together  to 
listen  to  the  popular  orators.  But  who  are 
the  orators  of  the  mob,  and  what  are  they 
saying?  They  are  men  of  faith;  and  they 
are  preaching  not  the  rights  of  man,  but  the 
duties  of  men.  In  the  presence  of  these 
great  duties  all  social  distinctions  fade 
away;  and  the  sentiment  of  equality  and 
fraternity  springs  up  of  necessity.  There 
must  be  liberty,  too;  but  these  preachers 
say  it  must  come  through  the  means  of  a 
strict  discipline,  for  it  is  freedom  from  sin 
that  is  desired.  It  was  strange  doctrine 
to  preach  to  a  mob,  but  it  was  believed. 
"Be  ye  perfect  as  God  is  perfect."  And  it 
was  true  doctrine;  for  only  through  perfect 
manhood  can  perfect  freedom  come.  The 
age  of  the  rights  of  man  must  come. 
There  must  be  Chartism  and  reform  bills 
and  the  long  struggle  for  social  privilege; 
but  was  it  not  a  great  thing  that  so  many 
people  grew  into  a  consciousness  of  their 
own  rights  through  their  new  consciousness 
of  God?  It  is  a  great  debt  that  we  owe  to 


Methodism  63 

Methodism  for  its  work  in  preparing  the 
way  for  the  new  government  by  the  people. 
There  is  not  time  to  follow  the  ramifica- 
tions of  its  influence.  It  has  been  influ- 
ential in  the  abolition  of  slavery,  in  the 
work  of  prison  reform  and  of  universal  edu- 
cation. It  has  been  a  power  coming  from 
the  masses  of  the  people,  and  making  not 
only  for  larger  rights,  but  for  larger  means 
of  grace.  It  has  developed  the  true  fellow- 
ship, which  is  the  actual  grasping  of  the 
brother's  hand,  and  not  the  mere  talking 
about  it. 

As  to  Methodism  as  an  organic  fact,  what 
shall  I  say?  Only  this,  —  that  it  is  some- 
thing which  is  so  good  that  one  cannot  help 
wondering  why  it  is  not  better.  It  is  a 
great  treasure  which  is  in  earthen  vessels, 
but  the  trouble  is  that  people  are  apt  to 
value  the  vessels  more  than  the  treasure. 
Wesley  had  all  the  defects  of  his  qualities 
and  the  limitations  which  belong  to  a  pop- 
ular leader.  The  Methodist  discipline  con- 
tains much  that  is  petty  and  irritating,  and 
which  almost  makes  us  forget  how  glorious 
is  the  spirit  behind  it.  With  all  his 


64  "Members  of  One  Body  " 

abounding  humanity,  Wesley  did  not  reach 
all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  When  he 
went  to  Scotland,  he  found  the  people  not 
so  easily  influenced  as  the  more  ignorant 
congregations  in  England.  There  is  some- 
thing pathetic  in  his  lamentations  in  his 
old  age  over  what  seemed  to  him  the  spirit- 
ual decline  of  his  societies.  As  people 
grew  well-to-do,  they  were  less  easily 
moved  than  when  they  first  listened  to  him 
on  the  moors.  After  preaching  to  a  certain 
congregation,  he  says:  "Many  of  them  were 
gay,  genteel  people.  I  was  out  of  their 
depth.  Oh,  how  hard  it  is  to  be  shallow 
enough  fora  polite  audience!"  One  feels 
a  certain  truth  in  this;  for  he  appealed  to 
the  elemental  forces,  which  lie  deeper  than 
anything  which  the  polite  audience  had 
felt.  Yet  it  reminds  us  of  the  naive  con- 
fession of  the  Hebrew  chronicler:  "And 
the  Lord  was  with  Judah,  and  he  drave  out 
the  inhabitants  of  the  hill  country;  and  he 
could  not  drive  out  the  inhabitants  of  the 
valleys,  because  they  had  chariots  of  iron." 
The  "gay,  genteel  people,"  shallow  as 
may  be  their  habitual  thoughts,  have  souls 


MetJiodism  65 

also,  as  preachers  like  Savonarola  have 
found;  and  men  of  intellectual  strength  and 
poise  need  the  ministry  of  religion,  also. 
If  Wesley  did  not  reach  them,  it  is  to  be 
attributed,  not  to  the  depth  of  his  religious 
experience,  but  to  the  narrowness  of  his 
religious  philosophy.  And  so  my  praise  of 
Methodism  must  have  some  serious  abate- 
ments. Says  Thomas  Carlyle,  "Is  not  se- 
rene or  complete  religion  the  highest  aspect 
of  human  nature,  as  serene  cant  or  complete 
no-religion  is  the  lowest  and  the  miser- 
ablest,  between  which  two  all  manner  of 
earnest  Methodisms,  introspections,  agon- 
izing inquiries,  never  so  morbid,  play  their 
respective  parts,  not  without  approbation?" 

But,  while  we  give  approbation  to  actual 
Methodism,  it  is  with  something  more  than 
approbation,  with  hearty  faith  and  rever- 
ence, that  we  speak  of  that  ideal  Methodism 
that  it  foreshadows. 

The  new  Methodism  will  cast  aside  what 
was  morbid  in  its  old  inquiries  and  what 
was  unreal  in  its  experiences,  but  it  will 
not  give  up  its  idea  of  religion  as  an  expe- 
rience. It  will  cry  aloud,  "Ye  must  be 


66  "Members  of  One  Body  " 

born  again,  and  again,  and  again!  "  It  will 
still  emphasize  those  great  moments  when 
the  light  flashes  in  through  "the  east  win- 
dows of  divine  surprise."  The  experiences 
of  religion  will  be  repeated  till  they  be- 
come as  manifold  as  life  itself. 

And  the  new  Methodism  will  so  interpret 
Wesley's  doctrine  of  perfect  sanctification 
that  it  will  come  to  mean  nothing  less  than 
the  fulfilment  of  manhood.  For  Wesley's 
emphasis  was  right.  Before  his  time  re- 
ligious teachers  had  talked  most  about  jus- 
tification, which  was  the  removal  of  the 
penalties  of  sin.  Wesley  said  that  the  main 
thing  was  the  removal  of  the  sin  itself. 
The  new  Methodism  will  see  that  the  per- 
fect life  is  not  to  be  found  through  the 
magic  of  a  single  experience,  but  it  will  all 
the  more  fervently  preach  that  the  one  ob- 
ject of  all  effort  should  be  to  obtain  it. 
And  it  will  find  no  more  inspiring  words  to 
guide  it  than  those  of  Wesley:  "Finally,  I 
preach  that,  being  justified  by  faith,  we 
taste  of  that  heaven  towards  which  we  are 
going;  and  we  tread  down  sin  and  fear,  and 
sit  in  heavenly  places  in  Christ  Jesus." 


RATIONALISM 


IV. 

RATIONALISM 

THE  types  of  Christianity  which  we  have 
thus  far  considered  have  been  mani- 
fested in  certain  historical  organizations. 
But  there  are  two  principles  which  are 
found  in  all  churches,  rationalism  and  mys- 
ticism. 

By  rationalism  is  here  meant  the  princi- 
ple of  common  sense,  or,  if  you  will,  the 
scientific  method  applied  to  religion.  The 
rationalist  does  not  recognize  the  authority 
of  any  book  or  church.  He  appeals  to  ob- 
servation and  experiment.  He  pleads  for 
perfect  freedom  of  thought,  and  denies  the 
sinfulness  of  doubt. 

To  ask  what  rationalism,  the  trust  in 
human  understanding,  the  method  of  exper- 
iment and  observation,  has  done  for  civil- 
ization, would  be  asking  altogether  too  great 
a  question  to  be  answerd  here.  When  Mr. 


70  "Members  of  One  Body  " 

Lecky  sought  to  write  the  history  of  ration- 
alism in  Europe,  he  found  that  in  reality 
he  was  writing  the  history  of  modern  civil- 
ization; for  every  step  in  the  progress  of 
civilization  has  been  a  step  made  possible 
by  the  method  of  science.  One  by  one  old 
superstitions  have  faded  away  in  this  grow- 
ing light.  One  by  one  the  obstacles  in  the 
path  of  freedom  have  been  brushed  aside. 
To  tell  what  rationalism  has  done  for  man 
would  be  to  tell  how  the  dark  nightmare  of 
persecution  has  passed  away,  how  all  the 
horrid  dreams  of  witchcraft  have  ceased, 
and  how  out  of  the  dark  ages  of  mankind 
has  come  the  new  age  in  which  we  live. 
All  free  government  is  the  result  of  the 
determination  of  men  to  use  bravely  those 
faculties  with  which  they  have  been  en- 
dowed, to  follow  absolutely  the  necessary 
laws  of  thought  which  they  have  discovered. 
And  so  the  old  ecclesiastical  authority 
wanes,  and  the  new  authority  of  reason 
takes  its  place.  But  what  has  rationalism 
done  for  Christianity  itself?  Here  we  ask 
a  question  where  there  may  be  a  difference 
in  opinion.  There  are  those  who  look 


Rationalism  71 

upon  this  growth  of  the  reasoning  power  in 
religion  as  the  death  of  Christianity,  or, 
at  least,  the  prophecy  of  its  swift  decay. 
Was  not  Christianity  born  in  ignorance? 
Was  it  not  cradled  in  miracle?  Has  not 
its  whole  course  been  through  superstitions 
which  have  faded  away  in  a  larger  light? 
And,  when  this  power  which  has  destroyed 
so  much  has  done  its  perfect  work,  shall 
not  Christianity  itself  become  only  a 
memory  ? 

In  order  to  answer  the  question  what 
rationalism  has  done  for  Christianity,  one 
must  inquire  further  as  to  what  this  scien- 
tific method  of  which  we  speak  is  capable 
of  doing,  and  what  are  its  natural  limita- 
tions. When  any  new  power  comes  into 
play,  it  is  apt  to  be  looked  upon  with  a 
superstitious  fear  and  a  superstitious  hope. 
So  it  is  with  liberty,  constitutional  and  re- 
ligious. So  it  is  with  this  power  which 
we  call  Science.  We  print  it  with  capital 
letters,  and  then  we  bow  down  and  worship 
it.  And  there  are  those  who  imagine  that 
the  time  is  coming  when  the  old  religions 
of  the  world  will  altogether  cease;  and  I 


72  "Members  of  One  Body" 

hear  it  sometimes  said  that,  if  we  are  but 
patient,  we  shall  see  the  creation  of  a  new 
religion,  which  will  be  the  religion  of 
science. 

It  is  imagined  that  all  that  men  have 
experienced  in  the  past  may  be  looked  upon 
as  a  delusion,  and  the  historic  growths 
of  religion  be  brushed  aside;  and  then  that 
through  an  act  of  pure  reasoning,  through 
the  exercise  of  scientific  intelligence,  we 
may  make  for  ourselves  a  new  religion, 
which  shall  be  adequate  to  all  our  wants. 
There  are  some  who  look  forward  with  great 
joy  and  hope  to  this  new  creation;  and 
there  are  others,  followers  of  the  old  gods, 
who  look  with  terror  upon  the  possibility. 
It  seems  to  me  that  both  the  hope  and  the 
terror  are  alike  unreasonable,  almost  ab- 
surd. Science  never  created  anything,  has 
no  power  to  make  anything.  Nothing  was 
ever  created  by  reasoning  about  it  or  com- 
paring it  with  something  else,  or  by  classi- 
fying it;  and  science  is  but  a  method  of 
classification,  of  comparison,  of  definition, 
and,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  a  thing 
must  exist  before  it  can  be  defined.  What 


Rationalism  73 

would  you  think  of  one  who  should  say: 
"  Life  thus  far  has  been  interesting  enough, 
but  not  complete.  It  has  existed  in  very 
poor  forms,  a  struggling,  weak  thing,  com- 
ing upward  by  slow  degrees  through  the 
ages.  By  and  by  we  shall  be  so  advanced 
that  all  this  will  be  done  away;  and  biol- 
ogy will  be  so  developed  that  we  shall  have 
a  biological  life  which  will  be  superior  to 
anything  we  have  seen  before."  You  say 
at  once  that  the  biologist  claims  nothing  of 
the  sort.  He  simply  sees  life,  tries  to  un- 
derstand it,  tries  to  trace  its  origin,  and,  if 
possible,  foretell  its  course.  That  is  all. 
He  accepts  the  fact  that  is  offered  to  him, 
and  so  his  science  has  its  justification;  but 
no  biologist  could  ever  invent  life  or 
create  it.  Long  ago,  when  natural  science, 
like  everything  else,  was  enveloped  in  su- 
perstition, a  man  would  bring  to  his  scien- 
tific friend,  the  alchemist,  a  bit  of  base 
metal,  and  would  say  "Here,  good  alche- 
mist, is  this  which  I  bring,  and  now  I  ask 
you  to  make  me  some  gold."  And  the  al- 
chemist, the  superstitious  man  of  science, 
would  try  to  fulfil  that  impossible  demand. 


74  "Members  of  One  Body" 

Not  so  does  the  miner  to-day  come  to  the 
assayer.  He  brings  his  ore;  and  he  says: 
"  Here  is  the  ore  which  I  have  found  in  the 
earth.  Now  I  ask  you  to  tell  me  how  much 
gold  is  in  it."  And  the  assayer,  having  the 
fact  presented  to  him,  can  give  some  esti- 
mate as  to  its  value.  Now,  in  just  such  a 
relation  must  religion  stand  to  science.  By 
no  possible  reasoning  could  any  man  invent 
it  or  create  it.  If  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
a  science  of  religion,  it  presupposes  the  fact 
that  religion,  more  or  less  perfect,  already 
exists.  That  which  is  presented  to  the 
philosopher  and  the  critic  is  a  certain  great 
fact  of  experience. 

It  is  a  fact  manifested  in  all  human  life, 
—  manifested  most  of  all,  Jesus  said,  where 
it  was  most  unconscious.  The  kingdom  of 
heaven  he  found  in  the  nature  of  a  little 
child.  And  so  he  placed  the  little  child  in 
the  midst  of  his  disciples,  and  said:  "This 
is  what  I  mean  to  teach  you.  There  is  a 
secret  hidden  from  the  wise  and  the  pru- 
dent, but  revealed  in  that  child's  nature. 
Tell  me  what  that  child's  nature  means, 
what  is  implied  in  it,  what  may  be  de- 


Rationalism  75 

veloped  from  it,  and  then  I  will  tell  you 
what  I  mean  by  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 
So  in  its  very  simplest  forms  religion 
presents  itself  to  us  as  a  fact  to  be  rec- 
ognized and  explained.  It  is  a  fact  just 
as  much  as  any  fact  of  natural  science, 
though  infinitely  more  wonderful.  It  is  a 
fact  that  men  in  the  midst  of  the  meanest 
surroundings  and  living  the  most  imperfect 
lives  have  yet  looked  up  toward  the  heavens, 
and  wondered  and  worshipped.  It  is  a  fact 
which  we  find  in  the  earliest  words  of  our 
old  Aryan  languages.  When  two  thoughts 
were  brought  together, —  the  thought  of 
that  which  was  nearest  and  of  that  which  is 
vastest  and  most  remote,  —  the  primitive 
shepherds  prayed  to  the  Sky-father.  They 
somehow  felt  that  the  universe  was  their 
Father's  house.  How  did  they  come  to 
have  that  feeling?  How  did  they  come  to 
worship  and  to  love,  and  at  length  bring 
their  worship  and  their  love  together? 
How  did  the  mystery  of  the  world  touch 
them  with  hope  and  faith?  Our  knowl- 
edge of  the  world,  our  actual  science,  may 
do  much.  It  divides  between  the  things 


76  "Members  of  One  Body  " 

we  know  and  the  things  we  do  not  know 
beyond;  but,  when  it  has  done  that,  it 
has  not  created  religion  or  accounted  for 
it.  You  tell  me  that  we  do  not  know  so 
much  of  that  unseen  world  as  our  fathers 
have  dreamed  of.  Very  well;  but  that  is 
not  the  question  of  religion.  The  question 
is  this :  How  comes  it  that  before  the  un- 
known men  have  stood  and  do  stand  to-day 
in  a  religious  attitude, —  that  is,  in  an 
attitude  of  hope  and  of  reverence  and  in- 
stinctive trust?  You  tell  me  that  you  will 
wait  till  religion  shall  be  placed,  as  we  say, 
upon  a  scientific  basis,  before  you  will  be- 
lieve in  religion,  when  the  very  fact  is  that 
that  which  challenges  our  science  is  just 
this :  that  men  have  been  so  constituted  as 
to  worship  the  invisible,  and  believe  that 
the  things  they  do  not  see  are  even  greater 
than  the  things  they  know.  What  would 
you  say  of  one  who,  in  the  beginning  of  a 
battle,  should  say:  "I  will  not  enter  into 
this  fight  until  you  place  my  courage  upon 
a  scientific  basis.  I  will  act  the  coward 
until  you  prove  to  me  that  the  victory 
is  mine,  and  that  I  will  come  out  un- 


Rationalism  77 

scathed  from  the  conflict?"  Ah!  you  know 
that  courage  is  something  more  than  that, 
and  something  diviner.  Courage  means 
that  the  man  takes  his  chances,  that  he 
gives  himself  to  some  high  quest,  that, 
without  waiting  for  an  answer,  he  chal- 
lenges the  unknown,  and  goes  to  battle  with 
joy.  That  is  the  very  essence  of  courage, 
that  it  outruns  the  sober  understanding ;  and 
that  is  the  meaning  of  love.  And  that  is 
the  meaning  of  hope,  as  Paul  said, —  "Hope 
that  is  seen  is  not  hope."  Hope  that  can  be 
scientifically  verified  is  not  that  thing 
which  elevates  the  man  above  the  beast. 
It  is  that  diviner  power  so  full  of  signifi- 
cance that  no  philosophy  has  ever  fathomed 
its  meaning.  Hope,  love,  trust,  courage, 
all  that  is  divinest  in  the  human  soul, — 
these  are  the  facts  to  which  we  refer. 
These  are  facts  which  have  appeared  among 
men  before  they  began  to  reason  about  life 
or  about  thought  or  about  conscience. 
These  form  part  of  that  kingdom  of  heaven 
which  is  in  the  heart  of  every  child. 

When  one  comes  to  think  of  religion  as 
being  something  which  we  find  most  divine 


78  "Members  of  One  Body" 

in  human  life,  and  the  existence  of  which 
is  verified  by  universal  experience,  we 
neither  look  for  a  new  religion  to  be  cre- 
ated by  some  scientific  process  or  to  be 
destroyed  by  it.  We  do  look  for  the  grow- 
ing knowledge  of  man  to  more  and  more 
separate  that  which  is  eternal  and  valuable, 
that  which  is  intrinsically  religious,  from 
that  which  is  untrue.  We  look  to  science 
to  do  here  what  it  does  everywhere, —  not  to 
create,  but  to  define  and  to  classify  the  facts 
which  already  exist.  Now,  I  think  we  are 
prepared  somewhat  to  answer  the  question 
as  to  what  rationalism,  the  free  use  of  our 
reasoning  faculties,  has  done  and  is  doing 
for  Christianity. 

Rationalism  has  helped  Christianity  by 
purifying  it,  by  taking  away  those  things 
which  do  not  and  never  have  in  reality  be- 
longed to  it,  thus  rendering  it  possible  to 
believe  in  it  and  to  see  what  it  really  is. 
And  rationalism  has  done  more  than  that. 
It  has  invested  Christianity  with  a  dignity 
and  a  meaning  which  it  never  had  before. 
Have  you  ever  noticed  that  the  least  inter- 
esting lives  of  any  great  religious  teachers 


Rationalism  79 

or  saints  have  been  those  which  have  been 
written  by  their  intimate  followers,  their 
uncritical  disciples?  I  remember  the  de- 
light with  which  I  first  read  Mrs.  Oli- 
phant's  "Life  of  Saint  Francis."  It  was 
written  from  a  Protestant  standpoint,  and 
yet  brought  a  living  picture  of  that  beauti- 
ful childlike  spirit  of  the  old  time.  It 
kindled  in  my  mind  a  desire  to  know  more 
about  the  saint,  and  I  borrowed  from  a 
Catholic  friend  one  of  the  standard  Catholic 
lives,  and  I  tried  to  read;  but,  alas!  my 
saint  was  not  there,  or  shall  I  say  he  was 
there,  but  cruelly  concealed  from  me?  In- 
stead of  that  simple,  beautiful  life,  I  read 
of  all  sorts  of  vulgar  miracles  and  prodigies 
attributed  to  him;  and  that  which  made  me 
love  him  most,  that  was  the  thing  which  his 
disciple  least  saw.  Is  not  that  true  in 
regard  to  all  religious  history?  Is  not  that 
true  in  regard  to  the  history  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  himself?  Even  when  we  go  to 
those  earliest  Gospels,  we  find  something 
like  that.  We  doubt  whether  those  who 
wrote  those  Gospels  dwelt  most  with  loving 
emphasis  on  the  story  of  the  Master  with 


80  "Members  of  One  Body  " 

the  little  children  in  his  arms,  or  whether 
it  might  not  have  seemed  still  more  divine 
to  them  that  this  man  was  wonderful  enough 
to  blast  the  fig-tree  by  a  mere  word  or  to 
send  the  devils  into  the  herd  of  swine. 
We  have  to  use  our  critical  faculties  at 
every  stage  of  the  history  before  it  yields 
its  spiritual  meaning  and  beauty.  When 
Sir  Edwin  Arnold  gave  us  "The  Light  of 
Asia,"  we  felt  as  if  we  would  all  like  to  be 
Buddhists.  This  religion  of  India  is  so 
beautiful,  so  tender,  when  we  are  allowed 
to  see  its  heart.  But  we  are  likely  to  be 
disappointed  when  we  go  to  the  Buddhist 
interpreters,  for  the  pure  light  is  hidden 
under  trivial  commentaries.  And,  when 
the  poet  turned  from  "The  Light  of  Asia" 
to  "The  Light  of  the  World,"  did  we  not 
feel  that  he  helped  us  to  understand  Chris- 
tianity,—  that  that  life  of  the  Master  in 
Galilee  was  more  beautiful  than  we  had 
thought,  when  we  saw  it  through  our  theo- 
logical preconceptions?  And  then  you  ask, 
Why  more  beautiful?  Not  because  he  had 
added  something,  but  because  he  had  simply 
brushed  away  all  those  horrid  thoughts  of 


Rationalism  8 1 

an  angry  God  and  the  bloody  atonement, 
and  introduced  once  more  the  Jesus  of  the 
Beatitudes.  That  is  the  method  not  sim- 
ply of  poetry,  but  of  rationalism.  For 
rationalism  is  the  assertion  of  the  right  to 
choose  among  the  things  handed  down  to 
us  those  which  commend  themselves  to  our 
understanding. 

There  is  no  way  in  which  religion  more 
surely  loses  its  ground  than  in  the  mistaken 
attempt  to  shut  out  this  rationalistic  and 
critical  spirit  from  the  teaching  of  religion. 
Just  after  the  Reformation  the  Jesuits 
gained  control  of  the  education  of  the  youth 
in  France.  "Let  us  have  the  children  and 
youth,"  they  said,  "and  we  do  not  care 
what  becomes  of  the  men."  The  result  of 
their  method  has  been  that  the  average 
Frenchman  at  some  time  or  other  has  come 
under  the  influence  of  a  narrow  type  of 
Christianity;  and  then,  as  he  becomes  a 
man,  he  grows  beyond  all  that,  and  looks 
upon  it  with  the  most  supreme  contempt. 
Protestants  are  often  doing  the  same  thing 
here  in  America.  The  careful  religious 
parent  would  have  his  son  receive  a  liberal 


82  "Members  of  One  Body  " 

education,  but  he  would  have  him  learn 
nothing  that  shall  in  the  least  way  enlarge 
or  alter  his  religious  faith.  And  so  he 
founds  his  denominational  college,  where 
there  shall  be  liberal  education  on  every 
possible  subject  but  religion.  The  result 
you  see  in  the  wide-spread  contempt  of  those 
who  graduate  from  institutions  where  this 
policy  prevails  for  all  that  belongs  to  re- 
ligion. It  is  inevitable  from  the  nature 
of  the  mind.  Here  is  the  boy  taught  in 
the  home  and  in  the  Sunday-school  that 
religion,  by  which  is  meant  his  form  of 
religion,  is  the  greatest  thing  in  the  world, 
and  because  of  that  he  worships.  We 
cannot  worship  anything  but  the  greatest. 
It  is  the  heart's  homage  to  the  highest,  the 
broadest,  and  the  truest.  And  then  he  goes 
to  school  and  to  college,  and  he  learns 
many  things.  This  world,  which  he  has 
been  taught  to  despise,  is  much  more  won- 
derful than  he  had  imagined,  so  full  of  in- 
terest, so  rich  in  meaning.  And  in  this 
wonderful  world  everything  is  related  to 
every  other  thing,  for  there  are  great  laws 
running  through  all.  He  comes  to  feel  the 


Rationalism  83 

interest  which  every  developed  mind  has  in 
every  fact  which  is  related  to  the  life  of  the 
universe.  The  veriest  bit  of  stone  has  its 
history.  The  blade  of  grass  tells  its  story 
of  the  past,  and  gives  its  prophecy  of  the 
future.  All  of  these  things  belong  to  one 
great  order, —  the  great  order  of  the  uni- 
verse. He  comes  to  have  little  interest  in 
any  unrelated  fact, —  any  fact  that  does  not 
tell  of  some  law  behind  it.  And  he  finds 
no  fact  which  has  not  such  relations,  except 
the  fact  of  his  religion.  This  seems  to 
stand  absolutely  alone.  It  is  no  longer  the 
greatest  thing  in  the  world  to  him,  when 
he  has  learned  of  the  wonders  of  natural 
law,  the  miracles  of  which  he  is  told  do  not 
seem  so  incredible  as  trivial.  All  secular 
history  is  a  mighty  unfolding.  It  strikes 
awe  into  his  soul.  But  the  history  of  re- 
ligion, as  he  has  been  taught  it,  seems  alto- 
gether finite,  beginning  a  certain  number 
of  many  centuries  ago, —  not  like  life  it- 
self, going  clear  back  to  the  beginning  and 
involved  in  the  necessity  of  things,  nor  like 
physical  power,  inevitable  and  eternal.  No 
correlation  of  forces  here,  no  comparison 


84  "Members  of  One  Body  " 

with  kindred  forms,  but  something  stem 
and  fixed  and  limited.  He  is  told  that  re- 
ligion consists  in  believing  certain  things 
which  are  said  to  have  happened,  but  for 
which  there  is  little  proof.  Its  apostolic 
succession  is  limited  to  some  little  line  in 
history,  and  is  not  a  great  stream  flowing 
from  everlasting  to  everlasting.  All  is 
so  small  and  so  inadequate.  And,  being 
trained  thus,  he  simply  becomes  indifferent 
to  religious  thought.  He  does  not  take  it 
seriously  any  longer. 

To  such  a  mind  rationalism  brings  salva- 
tion. Rationalism  teaches  that  religion  is 
not  an  isolated  fact,  not  a  fact  of  one  nation 
or  of  one  simple  stream  of  history,  not  some- 
thing that  is  accidental  or  artificial,  but  is 
just  as  inevitable  as  life.  Indeed,  it  is 
life,  the  life  of  the  soul.  It  teaches  that 
this  religion  that  he  has  learned  at  his 
mother's  knee  was  simply  one  ray  from  the 
central  sun,  one  throb  of  the  pulse  of  the 
world,  one  little  glimpse  of  that  which  is 
absolute  and  eternal.  Always  men  have 
been  religious,  always  something  within  the 
heart  has  been  striving  for  better  things; 


Rationalism  85 

and  the  best  religion  is  akin  to  the  worst 
religion,  as  the  highest  life  is  akin  to  the 
lowest.  The  Christ  himself  but  interprets 
the  heart  of  humanity,  if  he  is  the  desire  of 
all  nations.  And  rationalism  not  only 
teaches  this,  but  teaches  that  that  which 
most  repelled  him  did  not  belong  to  the 
essence  of  religion,  but  was  the  obstacle 
which  it  must  overcome  as  it  grows  toward 
perfection.  And  so  many  a  thing  which 
once  seemed  sacred  to  him  he  casts  aside, 
because  the  truth  of  things  has  grown  more 
sacred  and  more  divine  to  him. 

The  very  beauty  and  the  sanctity  of  re- 
ligion make  it  necessary  for  us  always  to 
allow  free  play  to  that  criticism  which 
alone  keeps  it  pure.  In  one  of  his  noblest 
sonnets  Shakspere  tells  us  that  it  is  the 
most  beautiful  soul  which  needs  to  be  most 
watchful  of  itself,  lest  things  foul  and  false 
take  shelter  there. 

"  Oh,  what  a  mansion  have  these  vices  got 

Which  for  their  habitation  chose  out  thee, 
Where  beautie's  veil  doth  cover  every  blot 

And  all  things  turn  to  fair  that  eyes  can  see ! 
Take  heed,  dear  heart,  of  this  large  privilege." 


86  "Members  of  One  Body" 

So  must  we  say  to  those  Christian 
churches  whose  history  has  been  so  glori- 
ous, and  which  have  been  the  custodians  of 
such  rare  grace.  Because  the  beauty  of 
holiness  has  in  such  large  measure  been 
there,  we  cannot  bear  to  think  that  they 
should  afford  refuge  fora  lie.  "Take  heed, 
dear  heart,  of  this  large  privilege." 

The  final  effect  of  rationalism  upon  re- 
ligion must  be  to  make  it  more  truly  spirit- 
ual. And  how  is  that?  you  say.  Do  we 
not  talk  of  "cold  rationalism"?  I  believe 
it  makes  religion  more  spiritual  simply  for 
this  reason:  that  it  demonstrates  to  us  that 
nothing  but  the  spiritual  element  can  abide. 
Nothing  but  this  will  stand  the  test  of  the 
severest  examination.  Paul  writes  of  these 
beautiful  fruits  of  the  spirit;  and  then  he 
says,  "Against  these  there  is  no  law."  No 
law  of  Moses  of  old, — that  was  his  thought, 
—  no  law  of  nature,  no  law  of  the  mind, 
can  make  these  less  or  different  from  what 
they  are. 

Rationalism,  the  religion  of  the  under- 
standing, is  the  John  the  Baptist  preparing 
the  way  for  the  religion  of  the  free  spirit. 


^  Rationalism  87 

Its  baptism  is  that  of  the  clear  water,  wash- 
ing away  old  errors.  But  it  prophesies  the 
new  baptism  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  of  fire. 
Jesus  brings  together  two  ideas,  which 
must  be  united  before  religion  can  gain 
complete  power,  when  he  says  that  men 
shall  worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  When 
we  bring  severest  truth  to  our  worship,  it 
becomes  most  spiritual.  All  else  shall 
fade,  but  here  is  something  that  abides. 
The  only  faith  that  can  stand  the  test  of 
reason  is  a  faith  that  "works  by  love  and 
purifies  the  heart." 


MYSTICISM 


V. 
MYSTICISM 

IT  is  somewhat  unfortunate  that  some  of 
the  best  words,  which  ought  to  have  the 
widest  significance,  are  narrowed,  accident- 
ally, in  their  application.  Such  is  the 
case  with  the  word  which  I  would  choose, 
had  it  not  otherwise  been  used, —  the  word 
"Spiritualist."  In  its  large  meaning,  a 
Spiritualist  is  a  man  who  believes  in  the 
things  of  the  spirit,  walks  according  to  the 
spirit,  the  man  who  feels  the  divineness  of 
his  own  soul,  and  that  it  is  in  touch  with 
the  infinite  soul  of  the  universe.  This 
good  word  has  been  adopted  by  those  who 
believe  in  certain  forms  of  intercourse  be- 
tween embodied  and  disembodied  spirits. 
The  word  "  spiritist "  would  be  the  more 
proper  one  for  this  type  of  thought,  leaving 
the  other  for  the  larger  meaning.  We 
have,  however,  one  word  which  has  been 


92  "Members  of  One  Body" 

actually  used  to  describe  this  kind  of 
thought  and  feeling, —  the  word  "mystic." 
The  mystic  is  one  who  appeals  not  pri- 
marily as  the  source  of  his  religion  to  a  book 
or  a  church,  nor,  as  does  the  pure  rational-j 
ist,  to  certain  arguments  and  logical  proc-| 
esses,  but  who  makes  the  direct  appeal  to 
his  own  heart.  He  believes  that  there  is  a 
revelation  from  the  Infinite, —  a  revelation 
vouchsafed  to  every  soul  in  the  degree  of 
its  purity.  And  so  he  listens  to  hear  the 
voice  of  the  eternal  spirit  speaking  to  him. 
He  believes  that  the  great  God  who  made 
the  heavens  and  the  earth  dwells  within 
himself,  and  that,  when  all  is  silent,  when 
self  is  forgotten,  and  all  the  passions  that 
disturb  the  mind  are  stilled,  he  becomes 
conscious  of  the  divine  presence.  There  is 
a  light,  he  says,  which  lighteth  every  man 
that  cometh  into  the  world.  Most  of  us  do 
not  see  that  light,  still  less  do  walk  in  it. 
We  love  the  garish  day,  and  we  forget  this 
holy  light  that  might  evermore  be  leading 
us  on.  And  the  height  of  wisdom,  this 
man  says,  is  not  to  accumulate  vast  stores 
of  knowledge,  nor  to  be  able  to  trace  from 


Mysticism  93 

their  beginnings  all  the  great  laws  and 
forces  of  the  external  universe;  but  it  is 
the  very  simplest  thing  in  the  world.  It  is 
simply  the  opening  of  our  own  eyes.  He 
also  says  the  outward  signs  of  deity  are 
not  the  strongest.  There  are  intimations 
which  come  to  every  one  of  us  when  we  are 
at  our  highest,  which  come  without  the 
aid  of  priest  or  church  or  ritual,  and 
make  us  sure  that  the  power  from  whence 
we  came  is  divine,  is  righteousness,  is 
love.  Men  who  have  thought  thus  have  not 
been  confined  to  any  one  nation  or  time. 
All  religions  have  had  them.  All  relig- 
ions, we  may  say,  began  in  just  this  kind 
of  thought,  in  the  minds  of  men  who  be- 
lieved first  of  all  in  the  intuitions  of  their 
own  souls.  But  all  religions  have  tended 
to  forget  their  origin,  to  make  of  this  per- 
sonal touch  with  the  divine  and  sense  of 
the  eternal,  a  miracle  confined  to  one  man, 
a  favorite  of  Deity,  and  afterwards  to  be 
received  on  faith.  Read  the  history  of 
Christianity  as  you  find  it  in  its  begin- 
ning, in  the  story  of  Jesus,  and  you  find  in 
this  man  a  pure  mystic,  a  pure  Spiritualist, 


94  "Members  of  One  Body" 

to  whom  these  finer  forces  were  all.  Jesus 
cared  little  for  the  tradition  of  the  religion 
of  his  own  land.  He  was  bold  to  say, 
"Thus  said  Moses,  but  /  say  unto  you 
something  far  different."  He  cared  little 
for  the  outward  forms  of  worship  as  they 
were  held  in  his  day,  and  told  those  who 
came  to  him  that  they  need  not  have  long 
prayers,  for  God  did  not  care  for  their  much 
speaking.  The  pure  in  heart  saw  God. 
The  little  children,  in  their  simplicity, 
were  the  wise.  As  you  follow  his  teach- 
ings, you  find  that  they  appeal  thus  directly 
to  the  inner  light.  If  that  light  which  is 
within  be  darkness,  Jesus  had  nothing  more 
to  say.  "He  that  hath  ears  to  hear,"  he 
said,  "let  him  hear."  "My  sheep  hear  my 
voice."  He  had  no  other  proof,  no 
stronger  miracle,  than  the  response  of  heart 
to  heart.  By  and  by  Christianity  became 
something  different  from  that  pure  spiritual 
influence.  The  thought  of  a  great  church, 
an  external  power,  what  Jesus  called  the 
kingdom  of  this  world,  dawned  upon  the 
minds  of  his  followers.  And  how  could 
that  be  supported?  How  should  men  be- 


Mysticism  95 

lieve  when  the  teachers  of  Christianity 
went  about  teaching  doctrines  that  did  not, 
perhaps,  awaken  response  in  the  soul? 
Something  external  must  take  the  place  of 
this  pure  spiritual  light.  And  so  came 
systems  of  theology  and  of  priestcraft,  great 
churches  founded  not  at  all  upon  the  appeal 
to  the  individual  soul,  but  upon  the  appeal 
to  outward  evidence,  and  at  last  to  some 
special  miracle.  That  has  been  the  general 
history  of  Christianity, —  the  making  exter- 
nal that  which  was  at  the  beginning  internal 
and  spiritual,  the  substitution  of  argument 
for  intuition,  and  at  last  the  appeal  to 
mere  custom  and  tradition  in  defence  of 
doctrines  which  both  the  heart  and  the 
logical  faculty  reject.  And  yet,  when 
we  thus  read  the  history  of  Christianity, 
we  are  seeing  only  upon  one  side.  All 
through  these  same  ages  another  kind  of 
thought  and  of  feeling  has  existed.  There 
have  been  men  who  have  drawn  aside  from 
the  churches  and  from  the  schools,  and 
sought,  as  the  very  heart  of  all  religion,  the 
answer  to  the  question,  How  do  I  stand  in 
my  relation  to  that  great  Power  from 


96  "Members  of  One  Body" 

whence  I  came?  And,  then,  How  do  I 
stand  in  relation  to  these  my  fellow-men 
about  me?  What  duties  do  I  owe  to  them? 
And,  then,  What  light  may  I  see  when  all 
about  me  grows  dark?  What  may  I  hear 
when  all  my  friends  stand  aside  and  I  face 
the  silence  of  eternity?  Many  of  these 
men  have  been  looked  upon  with  contempt 
by  the  churchmen  of  their  day.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  some  of  them  have  been 
recognized  as  the  spiritual  successors  of 
Jesus.  They  have  been  called  saints,  and 
almost  worshipped, —  these  men  who  stood 
alone,  thinking  their  own  thoughts.  Men 
have  worshipped  them,  built  new  churches 
to  their  memory,  done  everything  but 
understand  them.  These  were  the  mystics, 
the  men  of  the  spirit.  All  through  the 
dark  ages  these  men  abounded,  sometimes 
within  the  churches,  sometimes  without 
them.  They  did  not  reject  formally  the 
elaborate  doctrines  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
but  simply  ignored  them.  Seeing  some- 
thing far  better,  they  had  little  use  for  the 
subtleties  of  the  Schoolmen  and  for  the 
ambitious  schemes  of  ecclesiastics.  Mysti- 


Mysticism  97 

cal  sects  were  formed  whose  very  names 
were  significant.  "The  brethren  of  the 
free  spirit,"  some  of  them  called  them- 
selves, "the  brethren  of  the  common  life," 
others,  bringing  the  idea  of  something  far 
different  from  that  which  the  Church  of 
their  day  was  striving  to  effect.  So  the 
mystics,  Eckhart  and  Tauler,  arose  in  Ger- 
many; and  out  of  that  line  of  silent 
thinkers  and  pure  worshippers  came  at 
length  that  great  book  of  religion,  The 
"Imitation  of  Christ,"-  — a  marvellous  book, 
when  we  think  whence  it  came  and  when,  a 
book  of  religion  written  in  the  very  midst 
of  those  ages  of  scholastic  subtlety,  and  yet 
not  a  word  of  any  of  the  doctrines  which 
the  Church  of  that  time  esteemed  most  es- 
sential. It  may  be  read  to-day  by  men  of 
every  faith,  and  has  been  the  constant  com- 
panion of  many  who  have  cast  aside  tradi- 
tional Christianity.  It  breathes  nothing 
but  the  purest,  tenderest  sympathy  for  all, 
and  the  finest  hope  for  humanity.  It 
teaches  a  religion  which  seems  fitted  to  be 
universal.  It  is  strange  how  many  of 
the  doctrines  which  entangled  the  reason 


98  "Members  of  One  Body" 

of  men  were  broken  through  so  easily  by 
those  men  who  lived  in  the  spirit.  That 
great  doctrine  which  has  cast  such  darkness 
over  the  universe,  eternal  punishment, 
faded  away  before  the  clear  vision  of  most 
of  the  old  mystics.  It  was  something  with 
which  they  had  nothing  to  do  any  longer, 
now  that  they  had  learned  that  God  is  love. 
In  an  age  when  the  walls  of  churches 
were  covered  with  pictures  showing  the  tor- 
ments of  the  lost,  we  read  of  Heinrich 
Suso,  whom  the  people  called  "the  minne- 
singer of  the  love  of  God."  When  Master 
Eckhart  spoke  of  an  endless  hell,  he  said, 
"It  is  the  Nothingness  that  burns  eter- 
nally." To  the  scholastic  teachers  relig- 
ion was  a  prim  garden,  well  walled  about; 
but  the  mystics  loved  to  picture  it  as  a 
sweet  wilderness.  "The  spiritual  life," 
writes  one  of  them,  "may  fitly  be  called  a 
wilderness  by  reason  of  the  many  sweet 
flowers  which  spring  up  and  flourish,  when 
they  are  not  trodden  under  foot  of  men.  In 
this  wilderness  are  the  lilies  of  chastity  and 
the  white  roses  of  innocence,  and  there  are 
the  red  roses  of  sacrifice.  In  this  wilder- 


Mysticism  99 

ness,  too,  may  we  find  the  violets  of 
meekness,  and  many  other  fair  flowers  and 
wholesome  roots.  In  this  wilderness  shalt 
thou  choose  thyself  a  pleasant  spot  wherein 
to  dwell." 

The  Reformation  divided  Christendom 
along  intellectual  lines,  but  the  spiritual 
succession  remained  unbroken.  In  the 
Catholic  Church  Molinos  and  Fenelon  and 
Madame  Guyon  added  new  chapters  to  the 
"Imitation  of  Christ."  On  the  other  hand, 
Luther  was  powerfully  influenced  by  the 
German  mystics,  as  Wesley  was  afterwards. 
A  number  of  Protestant  sects  were  formed 
according  to  the  mystical  ideal  of  piety. 
The  Moravians  sought  to  re-establish  primi- 
tive Christianity,  with  its  quiet  walk  with 
God  and  its  blessing  upon  the  peace- 
makers, the  sons  of  God.  So  the  society  of 
Friends,  casting  aside  all  mere  ecclesiasti- 
cism,  found  a  deep  source  of  consolation 
and  strength  in  a  life  of  simplicity  and  un- 
selfishness. They  sought  to  keep  the  soul 
open  to  intimations  from  above;  and,  when 
no  words  came,  they  learned  to  worship  in 
reverent  silence.  Another  development  of 


ioo  "Members  of  One  Body" 

mystical  Christianity  is  seen  in  the  Church 
of  the  New  Jerusalem.  Immanuel  Sweden- 
borg  did  not  always  distinguish  between 
the  pure  intuitions  of  humanity  and  the 
pictures  of  his  own  imagination,  yet  he  has 
much  for  all  those  who  would  walk  in  the 
spirit. 

And  modern  liberalism,  in  the  midst  of 
all  its  new  doubts,  has  been  saved  from  arid 
denials  by  the  infusion  of  the  mystical  ele- 
ment. When  old  ideas  of  revelation  have 
failed,  men  have  listened  to  the  fresh  reve- 
lation in  their  own  souls.  In  America  the 
spiritual  possibilities  of  free  thought  were 
illustrated  in  the  Transcendental  movement. 
Though  it  was  associated  with  a  phase  of 
philosophy  which  was  transitory,  the  deeper 
influences  of  Transcendentalism  remain  as 
permanent  forces  in  our  life. 

In  Emerson  we  find  the  mystical  and  ra- 
tionalistic elements  united.  He  was  at 
once  a  seer  and  a  critic.  In  this  perfect 
union  of  the  intuitive  and  logical  faculties 
lies  the  possibility  of  a  free  religion.  He 
himself  says,  "What  one  man  is  said  to 
learn  by  experience,  a  man  of  extraordinary 


Mysticism  101 

sagacity  is  said  without  experience  to  di- 
vine. The  Arabians  say  that  Abul  Khain, 
the  mystic,  and  Abu  Ali  Seena,  the  philos- 
opher, conferred  together;  and,  on  parting, 
the  philosopher  said,  'All  that  he  sees  I 
know,'  and  the  mystic  said,  1A11  that  he 
knows  I  see.'  '  When  we  ask  what  mysti- 
cism has  done  for  religion,  we  must  answer 
that  it  has  given  rise  to  all  religions.  The 
fountain-head  is  always  found  in  some  pure 
heart.  The  intuition  comes  before  the 
argument.  Jesus  interprets  the  silence  of 
eternity  by  his  own  love  before  Paul  de- 
velops his  system  of  theology.  Men  are 
born  into  the  spiritual  life  before  they 
begin  to  discuss  the  theory  of  regener- 
ation. It  is  not  true,  as  Robert  Burns 
wrote,  that  "churches  are  built  to  please 
the  priests."  Churches  and  priesthoods 
come  into  existence  to  preserve  the  vision 
which  some  saintly  soul  has  seen.  They 
serve  as  a  copy  and  shadow  of  the  heav- 
enly things,  even  as  Moses  is  warned  of 
God,  when  he  is  about  to  make  the  taber- 
nacle, "  See  that  thou  make  it  according  to 
the  pattern  shewed  thee  on  the  mount." 


102  "Members  of  One  Body" 

The  temple  and  cathedral  are  meaning- 
less piles  of  stone  when  the  spirit  that  built 
them  has  fled. 

u  It  is  not  the  wall  of  stone  without 

That  makes  the  building  small  or  great, 
But  the  soul's  light  shining  round  about 
And  the  faith  that  overcometh  doubt 
And  the  love  that  is  stronger  than  hate." 

And,  as  the  purely  spiritual  element  is 
that  which  creates  a  religon,  it  is  also  that 
which  reforms  it.  The  inner  light  flashes 
upon  the  outward  abuses,  and  shows  their 
real  hideousness.  As  we  read  the  journal 
of  that  plain  Quaker,  John  Woolman,  we 
are  surprised  to  find  how  much  he  saw  that 
was  hidden  from  the  statesmen  and  divines 
of  his  day.  He  had  but  one  standard  by 
which  to  judge,  that  of  universal  righteous- 
ness. The  slaveholders  quoted  their  texts, 
and  brought  forward  their  special  pleas. 
But,  before  he  would  discuss  the  justice  of 
their  cause,  he  must  ask  a  more  searching 
question,  "Do  you  desire  nothing  but  jus- 
tice? "  And,  when  all  motives  of  self-in- 
terest were  eliminated,  it  was  seen  that  the 
question  was  too  plain  for  argument. 


Mysticism  103 

This  is  the  secret  which  the  pure  in 
heart  have  learned:  that  the  problems  of 
life  may  be  easily  solved  if  we  are  only 
willing  first  to  reduce  them  to  their  sim- 
plest terms.  Our  practical  mistakes  come 
largely  from  our  own  selfishness  and  love  of 
ease  and  lack  of  sympathy.  Purified  from 
these,  the  mind  becomes  a  mirror  reflecting 
back  the  truth  of  things.  "  He  that  is  spir- 
itual judgeth  all  things."  There  are  voices 
which  speak  out  of  the  silence,  and  which 
are  not  to  be  gainsaid. 

"  They  send  me  challenges  to  right, 

And  loud  rebuke  my  ill ; 
They  ring  my  bells  of  victory, 

They  breathe  my  *  Peace,  be  still ! ' 
They  ever  seem  to  say :  My  child, 

Why  seek  me  so  all  day  ? 
Now  journey  inward  to  thyself 

And  listen  by  the  way." 

It  is  a  superficial  view  which  sees  in  the 
search  for  inner  purity  and  peace  only  a  self- 
ish retreat  from  the  hard  conflict  of  life. 
It  is  rather  the  way  to  gain  strength  for 
that  conflict.  "For  their  sakes,"  said 
Jesus,  "I  sanctify  myself."  When  a  great 


104  "Members  of  One  Body" 

wrong  is  to  be  righted,  there  is  need  for 
that  high  courage  which  is  born  of  spiritual 
insight.  In  the  battle  there  must  be 
some  Sir  Galahad  who  can  say, — 

"  My  strength  is  as  the  strength  of  ten, 
Because  my  heart  is  pure." 

In  our  busy,  self-confident  age,  when 
there  is  a  tendency  to  believe  only  in  what 
is  external,  we  sadly  need  a  revival  of  the 
old  pieties.  We  cannot  get  along  without 
those  fruits  of  the  spirit  which  grow  in  the 
sheltered  gardens  of  the  interior  life.  To 
be  alert,  eager,  curious,  this,  we  say,  is 
to  be  alive.  Yet  it  is  only  part  of  life. 
And  many  a  man  who  prides  himself  on  his 
knowledge  of  the  world  is  a  stranger  to 
himself.  He  fears  no  foe  but  solitude. 
With  feverish  haste,  he  undertakes  new 
works,  reads,  perhaps,  many  books,  so  that 
he  may  not  have  time  to  think.  Never  in 
all  his  life  has  he  turned  aside  to  learn 
what  the  silence  may  have  to  teach  him. 
To  such  a  man  "knowledge  comes,  but  wis- 
dom lingers." 

To  most  of  us  there  comes  a  time  as  to 


Mysticism  105 

George  Eliot's  Maggie  Tulliver,  when  she 
took  up  the  book  of  Thomas  a  Kempis  with 
"a  wide,  hopeless  yearning  for  something, 
whatever  it  is,  that  is  the  greatest  and  best 
thing  in  the  world." 

Let  us  give  thanks  for  the  lesson  which 
all  the  men  of  the  spirit  teach  us:  that 
the  greatest  and  best  is  also  the  near- 
est, and  that  the  way  to  find  it  is  by  the 
path  of  simplicity.  Simplicity  of  purpose 
leads  one  to  work  with  God  for  things  that 
are  eternal.  Simplicity  of  thought  leads 
one  to  seize  directly  the  truths  that  are 
most  important.  Simplicity  of  feeling 
leaves  no  room  for  distracting  jealousy  or 
envy.  "Blessed  are  the  simple-hearted," 
says  the  old  saint  in  his  cloister;  "for  they 
shall  enjoy  great  peace." 

And  not  in  the  cloister  only,  but  by  mul- 
titudes amid  the  stress  and  strain  of  life, 
has  this  beatitude  been  verified.  Every- 
where love  finds  love,  and  simple  trust 
lays  hold  on  eternal  truth.  For  indeed 
"there  is  something  in  the  soul  above  the 
soul,  divine,  simple,  not  to  be  named." 


THE 
UNITY  OF   CHRISTENDOM 


VI. 
THE    UNITY    OF    CHRISTENDOM 

WE  have  considered  some  of  the  differ- 
ent types  of  Christianity.  The 
time  has  now  come  for  us  to  take  our  bear- 
ings, and  see  to  what  point  we  have  been 
irresistibly  led.  One  conclusion  seems  to 
be  forced  upon  us,  and  that  is  that  the  word 
"Christian"  has  a  larger  significance  than 
most  Christian  people  are  willing  to  allow. 
It  has  been  the  custom  for  each  sect  to 
make  its  own  definition,  large  enough  to 
include  only  itself,  and  to  trace  out  the 
channel  along  which  the  great  stream  of 
Christian  life  and  thought  must  of  necessity 
flow.  These  definitions  have  been  very 
much  like  the  levees  which  they  throw  up 
along  the  banks  of  the  lower  Mississippi: 
they  serve  excellently  well  in  low  water, 
but  in  the  first  freshet  the  great  river 
washes  them  away,  and  finds  new  channels 


no  "Members  of  One  Body" 

for  itself.  And  so  it  has  been  with  every 
great  revival  of  Christianity.  It  has  sur- 
prised those  who  have  made  the  definitions 
of  Christianity.  The  definitions  of  the 
Schoolmen  were  well  received  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  seemed  to  be  final;  but 
they  were  futile  obstacles  to  the  rising  tide 
of  the  Reformation.  All  the  properties  of 
the  Church  of  England  could  not  prevent 
the  revival  under  Wesley.  Christianity 
has  often  been  defined  as  a  system  of  eccle- 
siasticism;  but  that  has  never  prevented 
fervent  mystics  from  being  born  who  have 
seen  in  Christianity  a  direct  access  to  God 
without  need  of  church  or  priest.  Chris- 
tianity meant  a  theory  of  atonement  and  of 
trinity, —  but  not  to  Channing.  Chris- 
tianity meant  the  belief  in  miracles  and  in 
an  infallible  Bible, —  but  not  to  Theodore 
Parker.  The  Westminster  Assembly  of 
divines  declared  gravely  that  the  revelation 
of  God  had  ceased  when  the  canon  of  Script- 
ure was  completed,  and  that  henceforth 
"nothing  was  to  be  added  by  any  new  reve- 
lation of  the  spirit."  But,  when  a  man 
feels  in  his  own  heart  that  a  new  revelation 


The  Unity  of  Christendom  ill 

of  the  spirit  has  indeed  come  to  him,  what 
can  any  assembly  of  divines  do?  The 
strong  man  keepeth  his  house,  but  only 
until  the  stronger  than  he  has  come. 

In  religion,  as  in  love,  "nice  customs 
curt'sy  to  great  kings."  When  the  king 
has  come  to  his  own  again,  all  the  acts  of 
exclusion  which  were  passed  during  the  in- 
terregnum are  null  and  void.  Said  Jesus, 
"The  kingdom  of  heaven  surfereth  violence, 
and  the  violent  take  it  by  force."  The 
temple  stands  unchanged  for  generations 
till  one  comes  so  full  of  the  spirit  of  wor- 
ship that  he  is  able  to  destroy  the  temple 
and  forthwith  build  it  again.  And  the 
old  creeds,  which  have  stood  unchanged 
through  ages  of  chilling  doubt,  fall  away 
before  the  coming  of  a  new  age  of  faith,  as 
the  leaves  which  cling  all  winter  to  the 
oaks  fall  off  at  the  fresh  budding  of  the 
spring.  Traditional  religion  is  always  at 
the  mercy  of  personal  religion.  It  holds 
its  own  only  by  sufferance,  and  the  memory 
of  what  the  spirit  said  in  the  past  fades 
away  when  once  more  the  spirit  speaks  to 
men  in  the  present. 


112  "Members  of  One  Body" 

What  does  this  all  mean?  It  means 
simply  this:  that  religion  is  not  a  form, 
but  a  life,  and  life  is  the  one  thing  which 
it  is  impossible  for  us  to  define;  it  is  that 
which  mocks  at  all  the  forms  it  uses.  Life 
is  the  most  persistent  thing  we  know,  and 
yet  the  most  susceptible  to  change.  It 
is  the  artist  which  is  continually  mould- 
ing the  world  to  its  desire;  and  yet  it  is  of 
all  things  most  plastic,  and  is  influenced  by 
every  touch.  Could  we  have  seen  the  first 
germ  of  life  that  appeared  upon  our  planet, 
by  what  possibility  could  we  have  defined 
it?  What  prophet  could  have  foretold  what 
forms  it  must  take  ?  And  yet,  if  our  wise 
men  speak  truly,  in  that  simple  germ  there 
was  the  promise  and  the  potency  of  all  the 
forms  of  vital  existence.  Could  we  have 
stood  and  watched  it  with  the  eye  of  wis- 
dom, what  could  we  have  said  but  this? 
A  new  force  has  come  into  play,  and  hence- 
forth this  planet  is  to  be  the  battle-field  on 
which  is  to  be  fought  out  its  mighty 
struggle  for  existence.  At  the  beginning 
it  seems  to  be  the  weakest  and  the  most 
helpless  of  all  things:  it  seems  that  all  the 


The   Unity  of  Christendom  113 

odds  are  against  the  persistence  of  the  vital 
force.  All  the  forces  of  nature  seem  hos- 
tile, and  are  combining  to  destroy  it;  and 
only  after  long  ages  have  passed  will  these 
forces  become  its  servants.  In  the  mean 
time,  how  is  life  to  escape  its  enemies? 
There  is  only  one  way  by  which  it  can  do 
it,  and  that  is  by  continually  yielding  to 
them,  by  changing  its  forms  as  new  dangers 
approach. 

Only  through  its  myriad  disguises  has 
life  been  able  to  survive.  The  old  myths 
are  full  of  stories  of  metamorphosis,  but 
none  so  strange  as  that  which  sober  science 
tells.  From  form  to  form  it  maketh  haste, 
ever  clothing  itself  in  new  colors  and  elud- 
ing its  old  enemies.  Each  new  circum- 
stance which  makes  life  seemingly  impos- 
sible, while  it  destroys  the  old  form  under 
which  it  existed,  is  but  the  mould  in  which 
some  new  type  of  life  is  cast. 

What  is  true  of  life  in  general  is  true  of 
every  form  of  life.  It  is  true  of  religion: 
it  is  true  of  that  particular  form  of  religion 
which  we  call  Christianity.  Christianity 
has  existed  through  eighteen  centuries  be- 


114  "Members  of  One  Body" 

cause  it  has  taken  in  turn  the  impress  of 
each  century  that  has  passed.  When  we  go 
back  to  the  beginning,  and  ask  ourselves 
concerning  primitive  Christianity,  we  are 
apt  to  be  sadly  disappointed;  and  the  more 
critical  our  study  of  its  original  documents, 
the  more  meagre  seem  to  be  the  results. 
Each  sect  of  Christendom  claims  to  be  the 
direct  descendant  of  this  primitive  form  of 
Christianity.  These  claims  can  neither  be 
proven  nor  disproven.  What  did  Jesus 
teach  in  regard  to  the  Church,  its  min- 
isters, its  doctrines,  and  its  ordinances? 
What  did  he  teach  in  regard  to  predesti- 
nation, in  regard  to  the  trinity,  in  regard 
to  atonement,  the  apostolic  succession,  or 
the  second  probation?  What  was  the  prac- 
tice of  the  early  Church  and  its  theory  in 
regard  to  social  questions?  Was  that  com- 
munity of  goods  of  which  we  read  only 
something  accidental,  or  were  these  early 
Christians  seeking  to  inaugurate  a  social- 
istic commonwealth?  He  who  wishes  to 
dogmatize  on  these  subjects  may  do  so  with 
impunity,  but  he  who  wishes  to  find  the 
ultimate  facts  must  confess  that  the  sources 


The   Unity  of  Christendom  115 

of  information  we  have  are  not  sufficient. 
One  thing  we  are  safe  in  saying:  that  not 
one  of  the  existing  sects  of  Christendom 
is  an  exact  reproduction  of  the  earliest 
type. 

The  origin  of  Christianity,  like  the 
origin  of  most  great  historic  movements,  is 
shrouded  in  obscurity.  Even  Paul  did  not 
enter  into  the  thought  of  the  first  circle  of 
the  Galilean  disciples.  He  boasts  that  he 
received  his  gospel,  not  through  them,  but 
by  direct  inspiration  of  his  own;  and,  when 
it  pleased  God  to  reveal  his  Son  in  him,  he 
went  not  up  to  Jerusalem  to  the  other  dis- 
ciples, but  he  went  into  Arabia,  and  there 
in  solitude  wrought  out  his  thought. 

The  claim  that  some  one  type  of  Chris- 
tianity represents  exactly  the  first,  and  has 
been  miraculously  preserved,  so  that  it  only 
is  to-day  entitled  to  receive  the  name 
"Christianity,"  is  baseless.  It  is  most 
easily  disproved  when  made  by  great  his- 
toric churches  like  the  Catholic  and  the 
Anglican,  whose  development  and  changes 
have  been  wrought  in  the  full  light  of 
history.  We  know  how  much  older  some 


1 16  "Members  of  One  Body  " 

of  their  rites  and  doctrines  are  than  the  early 
Christianity,  and  how  much  newer  are  others. 
To  say  that  they  are  Christian  no  more 
means  that  all  of  their  characteristics  can 
be  traced  to  a  single  source  in  the  Gospels 
than  to  say  that  the  Mississippi  River  rises 
in  Lake  Itasca  means  that  every  drop  of 
water  which  flows  through  the  great  river 
into  the  gulf  had  its  origin  in  Minnesota. 
So  Christianity  to-day  is  a  great  historic 
stream.  We  trace  its  course  to  the  Gali- 
lean hills,  but  it  has  had  great  tributaries 
flowing  into  it.  Roman,  Grecian,  Egyp- 
tian, Persian,  and  Gothic  streams  have 
joined  it;  and  the  waters  have  been  long 
intermingled. 

What,  then,  was  primitive  Christianity, 
or,  rather,  what  shall  we  say  Christianity 
is  in  its  essence?  It  is  just  what  Jesus 
said  it  was, —  a  germ  of  spiritual  life, 
itself  the  result  of  countless  causes  in 
the  past  and  to  be  the  cause  of  countless 
effects  in  the  future.  "The  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  like  a  grain  of  mustard-seed, 
which,  when  it  is  sown  upon  the  earth,  is 
less  than  all  the  seeds  that  are  upon  the 


The   Unity  of  Christendom  117 

earth,  yet,  when  it  is  sown,  groweth  up  and 
becometh  greater  than  all  herbs,  and  putteth 
out  great  branches."  Christianity  has  put 
forth  many  great  branches  in  the  past,  and 
is  destined  to  put  forth  more  in  the  future. 
We  cannot  define  it  until  it  is  finished,  and 
no  religion  is  finished  until  it  is  dead. 
Because  we  believe  in  the  vitality  of  Chris- 
tianity, we  cannot  limit  it  to  this  or  that 
form. 

And  so  the  sympathetic  student  of  Chris- 
tianity comes  to  different  forms  in  which  it 
is  manifested.  He  sees  that  one  is  better 
than  another,  finer  in  its  significance,  and 
stronger  in  its  fibre;  and  yet  he  denies 
to  none  of  them  the  great  Christian  name. 
He  sees  in  all  of  them  the  historic  develop- 
ments of  a  single  spiritual  life.  When 
thus  we  come  to  look  upon  different  forms 
of  Christianity,  we  may  criticise  all,  but 
we  will  despise  none.  The  ignorant  Catho- 
lic looks  upon  Luther  as  the  arch-enemy, 
and  sees  in  the  Reformation  of  the  sixteenth 
century  only  a  great  outburst  of  hate  against 
the  holy  Mother  Church.  The  enlightened 
Catholic,  though  he  may  still  regret  the 


Ii8  "Members  of  One  Body" 

schism,  sees  that  it  was  inevitable.  And 
so  the  ignorant  Protestant  looks  upon  the 
Church  of  Rome  as  "the  scarlet  woman," 
and  he  imagines  that  all  the  claims  of  papal 
supremacy  arose  from  the  evil  machinations 
and  impostures  of  priests.  But  go  back 
with  me  to  the  time  when  this  supremacy  of 
Rome  began.  Ask  what  was  the  reason 
that  all  Christendom  looked  there  for  help 
and  bowed  down  to  this  great  power.  As 
we  study  the  origin  of  it,  we  see  the  reason 
of  it.  It  was  a  time  when  the  old  Roman 
Empire  was  tottering  to  its  fall,  and  civil- 
ization with  it.  Men,  affrighted,  were 
looking  toward  Rome  again  for  that  power 
which  should  save  them  from  the  impending 
ruin.  Who  is  there  to  give  help  ?  The 
emperors?  A  degenerate  race,  no  longer 
living  in  the  cities  of  the  Caesars,  but 
hiding  in  the  marshes  of  Ravenna.  The 
senators?  There  was  a  time  when  their 
very  presence  awed  the  barbarous  Gauls,  but 
now  they  are  mere  sycophants,  worthy  only 
of  the  scorn  that  is  heaped  upon  them. 
The  people  of  Rome?  Once  the  ambassa- 
dors of  Pyrrhus  said  that  every  one  of  them 


The  Unity  of  Christendom  119 

was  a  king,  and  now  they  are  but  slaves 
rejoicing  in  their  fetters.  The  Roman 
legions  ?  Once  they  were  the  terror  of  the 
world:  now  they  are  the  mercenaries  sell- 
ing their  swords  to  the  highest  bidder. 
Who,  then,  shall  save  in  this  hour  of  bitter 
need?  There  is  but  one  man  able  to  do 
the  deed,  but  one  high  office  which  has  not 
been  bereft  of  majesty.  Attila  and  his  Huns 
are  at  the  gate  of  Italy.  Who  is  it  that  goes 
forth  to  meet  them?  It  is  Leo,  the  bishop, 
who  goes  unarmed  into  their  camp;  and, 
when  he  returns,  Rome  for  the  time  is 
saved.  A  spiritual  might  was  his  which 
awed  the  barbarians.  In  all  those  panic- 
stricken  ages  but  one  institution  remained 
strong,  and  that  was  the  Church.  In  time 
of  need,  it  armed  itself  with  new  weapons 
against  the  barbarians.  With  consummate 
strategy  it  outflanked  the  enemy  at  every 
point.  Before  the  barbarians  could  reach 
Italy  missionaries  of  the  cross,  who  were 
the  soldiers  of  civilization  as  well,  had  met 
them,  and  conquered  them  in  their  own 
dark  forests.  The  Vikings  sailed  away  on 
their  voyages  to  the  south,  and  Christen- 


I2O  "Members  of  One  Body" 

dom  trembled;  but,  when  they  returned,  it 
was  to  find  the  cross  planted  at  the  head  of 
the  fiord,  and  to  hear  tales  how  the  White 
Christ  had  come  and  conquered  Odin  in  his 
immemorial  fastnesses.  Do  you  wonder 
that  men  who  saw  these  things  wondered 
and  worshipped?  Do  you  wonder  that 
the  men  who  did  these  things  were  re- 
ceived with  boundless  adoration  and  con- 
fidence by  those  whom  they  saved?  Al- 
ways it  is  the  law  of  life  that  he  that 
overcometh  shall  have  power  over  the  na- 
tions. The  power  of  the  Church  of  Rome 
was  nobly  won.  Alas  that  it  has  not  al- 
ways been  so  nobly  used!  And  if,  in  that 
great  struggle  with  barbarism,  the  Church 
itself  suffered;  if,  in  going  down  in  that 
hand-to-hand  conflict  with  Paganism,  it  be- 
came itself  half  paganized;  if  a  thousand 
dark  superstitions  clung  to  it,  and  if  its 
voice  lost  something  of  its  old  purity,  —  let 
us  be  sorrowful,  but  never  scornful.  Every 
battle  of  the  warrior  is  with  confused  noise 
and  with  garments  rolled  in  blood;  yet  the 
warrior  is  not  less  worthy  of  our  plaudits 
because  of  the  stains  and  the  scars  of  the 
battle. 


The   Unity  of  Christendom  121 

When  Dante  had  won  his  way  through 
the  darkness  of  hell,  and  at  last  in  the 
light  of  day  began  his  ascent  of  the  moun- 
tain, his  guide  wet  his  hands  with  dew 
and  gently  washed  from  his  face  the  smoke 
which  had  gathered  on  it.  And  so  must 
every  true  reformer  feel  toward  the  great 
Church  to  which  we  owe  so  much.  When 
we  see  it  emerging  all  darkened,  but  tri- 
umphant, from  the  inferno  of  barbarism, 
we  should  look  upon  it  not  with  contempt, 
but  with  love.  The  new  day  has  dawned; 
and,  now  that  it  stands  in  the  morning 
light,  let  it  cleanse  itself  from  the  old 
stains  with  the  morning  dew. 

And  so  it  is  with  the  controversies  be- 
tween rationalist  and  traditionalist,  radi- 
cal and  conservative,  orthodox  and  liber- 
alist.  These  controversies,  of  themselves, 
do  little;  for  the  aim  of  the  controversial- 
ist is  to  find  out  the  weak  point  of  his 
antagonist.  But  what  profits  this?  Sup- 
pose I  can  prove  that,  in  regard  to  certain 
things,  my  neighbor  is  only  a  fool,  am 
I  wiser  for  my  discovery?  It  is  not  his 
weak  point,  but  it  is  his  strong  point 


122  "Members  of  One  Body" 

which  may  help  me.  Suppose  he  is 
frightened  at  a  shadow,  I  want  to  know  the 
shadow  of  what.  Suppose  this  doctrine  of 
his  is  only  a  fiction,  still  the  important 
question  remains,  On  what  fact  is  that  fic- 
tion founded,  and  how  was  it  suggested? 
Says  Dr.  Martineau,  "  Every  fiction  that  has 
ever  laid  strong  hold  of  human  belief  is  the 
mistaken  image  of  some  great  truth  to 
which  reason  will  direct  its  search;  while 
half-reason  is  content  with  laughing  at  the 
superstition,  and  unreason  with  believing 
it."  When  we  assume  this  attitude,  we 
begin  to  see  through  all  its  variations  of 
thought  the  essential  unity  of  Christianity. 
The  most  opposite  types  of  Christianity,  we 
have  seen,  have  points  of  kinship.  How 
far  apart  seem  the  Catholic  and  the  so- 
called  liberal  Christian!  and  yet  in  their 
ultimate  ideal  they  are  one,  for  Catholicity 
and  liberality  are  synonymes.  Each  of 
them  is  aiming  to  get  beyond  sectarian  nar- 
rowness, and  to  build  a  universal  Church. 
They  agree  as  to  their  ideals :  they  disagree 
as  to  their  way  of  reaching  them.  Calvin- 
ism and  rationalism  stand  in  antagonism 


The  Unity  of  Christendom  123 

to-day;  but,  when  we  go  back  to  the  six- 
teenth century,  we  see  that  then  Calvinism 
was  rationalism.  It  was  the  application  of 
the  scientific  method  to  the  facts  of  relig- 
ion as  then  understood.  John  Wesley  had 
many  harsh  things  to  say  of  the  mystics, 
whose  influence  he  thought  he  had  escaped; 
and  yet,  in  spite  of  this,  his  Methodism  was 
but  a  kind  of  mysticism,  and  his  experi- 
ences of  religion  were  but  the  sudden  flash- 
ings of  the  inner  light.  There  is  a  spir- 
itual gravitation  that  holds  us  all.  We 
emphasize  our  differences,  but  the  law  of 
the  universe  works  steadily  for  unity.  We 
contradict  what  our  neighbor  says,  but  we 
are  silent  when  we  find  out  what  he  means. 
In  the  Middle  Ages  people  laughed  at  the 
idea  of  the  antipodes :  it  was  so  unspeak- 
ably absurd  that  people  should  walk  with 
their  feet  upward.  But,  when  men  trav- 
elled to  the  antipodes,  they  found  that  they 
very  easily  adapted  themselves  to  the  situa- 
tion. You  say  you  do  not  understand  how 
reasonable  people  can  believe  this  or  that 
thing  which  offends  you.  You  are  severely 
orthodox;  and  you  cannot  understand  how 


124  "Members  of  One  Body" 

one  can  pretend  to  have  any  religion  at  all, 
and  not  believe  in  the  atonement  and  the 
infallibility  of  the  Bible.  You  have  a  fine 
sense  of  propriety,  and  you  don't  under- 
stand how  people  can  go  through  the  streets 
beating  tambourines  for  the  glory  of  God 
like  the  Salvation  Army.  You  are  ex- 
tremely matter-of-fact,  and  believe  only  in 
that  which  you  can  see  and  touch;  and  you 
cannot  understand  how  any  one  can  be  a 
theosophist.  You  are  a  very  advanced 
thinker;  and  you  like  to  have  some  new 
thought  every  day,  or  something  that  seems 
to  you  new.  You  do  not  understand  how 
the  Churchman  can  take  comfort  in  a  lit- 
urgy just  because  of  its  old  associations. 
Well,  probably  the  fact  is  that  you  do  not 
understand.  Did  it  never  occur  to  you  that 
it  might  be  a  very  excellent  thing  if  you 
were  to  try  to  understand?  And  perhaps, 
in  trying  to  understand  your  neighbor's  re- 
ligion, you,  too,  might  be  better  able  to 
understand  the  real  meaning  of  your  own. 
We  build  our  Babel  towers  of  spiritual 
pride,  that  all  the  world  may  see  us,  and 
come  to  us;  and  the  result  is  only  a  sad 


The  Unity  of  Christendom  125 

confusion  of  tongues.  We  forget  ourselves, 
and  go  out  and  try  to  look  at  things  through 
our  neighbor's  eyes;  and  we  find  that  there 
is  one  language  which  never  has  been  con- 
fused, but  which  all  understand. 

In  this  slight  study  of  the  different  types 
of  religion  we  have  found  something  admi- 
rable in  each.  We  acknowledge  our  debt  to 
Roman  Catholicism  for  its  beauty  and  its 
dignity,  for  its  ideal  universality  and  actual 
grandeur;  our  debt  to  Calvinism  for  its 
stern  sincerity,  its  logical  consistency,  its 
unbending  rectitude;  our  debt  to  Metho- 
dism for  its  warmth;  to  rationalism  for  its 
searching  light;  to  mysticism  for  its  vision 
of  peace.  But  what  is  greater  than  any  one 
of  these?  All  of  them.  Our  very  recogni- 
tion of  the  truth  which  each  contains  makes 
us  realize  how  fragmentary  each  is.  Mil- 
ton compares  the  work  of  sectarianism  to 
that  of  Typhon  in  the  Egyptian  myth,  who 
cut  in  pieces  the  body  of  Osiris.  So  he 
says :  "  They  took  the  virgin  Truth,  hewed 
her  lovely  form  in  a  thousand  pieces,  and 
scattered  them  to  the  four  winds.  From 
that  time  ever  since  the  sad  friends  of 


126  "Members  of  One  Body" 

Truth,  such  as  durst  appear,  imitating  the 
careful  search  that  Isis  made  for  the 
mangled  body  of  Osiris,  went  up  and  down, 
gathering  limb  by  limb,  as  they  could  find 
them.  And  we  have  not  yet  found  them 
all,  Lords  and  Commons,  nor  ever  shall  do 
so  till  her  Master's  second  coming:  he 
shall  bring  together  every  joint  and  mem- 
ber, and  shall  mould  them  into  one  immor- 
tal feature  of  loveliness  and  perfection." 

The  partial  truth  which  each  sect  illus- 
trates but  makes  us  long  for  the  full  truth 
which  would  come,  were  all  united. 

We  come  through  the  study  of  the  sects, 
to  the  all-compelling  ideal  of  the  unity  of 
Christendom.  The  Church  which  will 
satisfy  us  must  be  not  in  name,  but  in  fact, 
the  Church  of  unity.  The  great  things  are 
the  things  which  make  for  unity.  The 
passion  for  righteousness,  the  love  of  truth, 
the  sense  of  need,  the  solemn  awe  in  the 
presence  of  the  Infinite,  the  unconquerable 
hope  that  looks  on  death  and  yet  prophesies 
life, —  what  form  of  religion  is  so  divine 
that  it  does  not  find  in  these  things  the 
spring  of  its  power  and  the  secret  of  its 


The  Unity  of  Christendom  127 

ineffable  charm?  And  what  form  of  relig- 
ion is  so  poor  that  it  does  not  to  some  de- 
gree express  these  things?  The  earthen 
vessels  are  various  and  grotesque;  but  the 
treasure  within  is  one,  "for  the  excellency 
of  the  glory  is  not  of  man,  but  of  God." 

But  how  may  this  unity  be  practically 
realized?  I  have  very  little  hope  in  any 
external  power  that  shall  compel  uniform- 
ity. I  think  such  external  union  under 
present  conditions  neither  desirable  nor 
practicable.  When  we  read  that  different 
competing  firms  have  united  their  interests 
in  one  great  trust,  we  expect  very  soon  after 
to  find  a  modest  item  in  the  papers  to  the 
effect  that  this  trust  has  taken  measures 
to  limit  production.  And,  were  all  the 
churches  of  Christendom  united  in  one 
Church,  the  next  movement  would  be  to 
repress  the  liberty  of  prophesying.  If  we 
cannot  have  liberty  and  union,  we  must 
cling  ever  to  liberty.  But  I  am  one  who 
believes  that  through  the  most  perfect  lib- 
erty will  come  at  last  the  perfect  unity. 

You  long  for  the  communion  of  saints, 
for  the  privilege  of  some  large  fellowship, 


128  "Members  of  One  Body" 

from  which  you  imagine  that  you  are  shut 
out  by  the  different  forms  of  ecclesiasticism. 
But  the  problem  of  Christian  unity  can  be 
solved  by  each  individual  for  himself.  You 
can  have  all  the  communion  and  all  the 
fellowship  that  you  want  if  you  are  willing 
to  accept  it  in  the  way  it  comes.  There  is 
no  power  in  any  sect  or  church  that  can 
prevent  that  largeness  of  sympathy  which 
every  man  of  true  religion  exercises.  I 
like  that  good  old  New  England  Puritan 
who,  when  on  account  of  some  church  quar- 
rel he  was  excommunicated  by  the  church, 
refused  to  stay  excommunicated.  We  read 
that  for  twenty  years  the  good  man  came 
every  communion  Sunday,  and  brought  with 
him  a  bit  of  bread  and  bit  of  wine  of  his 
own,  and  there,  in  the  safety  of  his  high 
pew,  communed  with  the  church,  in  spite 
of  the  deacons.  When  a  man  brings  his 
own  communion  with  him,  who  can  pre- 
vent? Whether  we  shall  enjoy  the  com- 
munion of  saints  depends  on  ourselves. 
The  best  that  belongs  to  Calvinism  and 
the  best  that  belongs  to  Romanism  is  mine, 
if  I  seek  it.  This  fellowship  of  the  spirit, 


The   Unity  of  Christendom  129 

which  is  the  only  fellowship  that  one  need 
care  to  obtain, —  this  fellowship  is  ours,  if 
we  will. 

I  have  said  that  religion  is  a  life,  and 
life  is  that  which  brings  unity.  We  come 
into  sympathy  with  each  other  just  in  pro- 
portion as  our  life  grows  strong  and  full. 
The  problem  of  church  relations  must 
always  settle  itself  according  to  the  de- 
mands of  one's  own  life. 

What  each  one  of  us  wants  in  religion  is 
a  more  abundant  life,  and  the  only  question 
is  whether  this  form  or  that  form  gives  it. 
Does  a  certain  form  of  religion  satisfy  your 
deepest  needs?  Does  it  make  life  larger 
and  more  radiant?  Does  it  make  the  laws 
of  duty  seem  more  absolute  and  divine? 
Then  that  is  your  religion,  though  all  the 
world  should  scorn  it;  that  is  your  word  of 
life,  because,  when  you  hear  it,  you  live. 
So  long  as  it  thus  speaks  to  you,  your  work 
is  to  leave  all  and  follow  it. 

But  has  the  time  come  when  it  ceases  to 
be  this?  Does  it  no  longer  speak  to  you  in 
a  voice  of  divine  authority,  but  has  it  begun 
to  apologize  for  its  own  existence?  Does 


130  "Members  of  One  Body" 

it  no  longer  bear  you  up  as  with  great 
wings,  but  has  it  become  a  dead  weight 
which  you  must  carry?  Does  it  seem  most 
doubtful  to  you  when  your  mind  is  clearest, 
least  necessary  to  you  when  you  are  most  in 
need?  Is  your  religion  no  longer  some 
bright  ideal,  but  only  a  reminiscence  of 
the  past?  Does  it  no  longer  compel 
the  upward  look  and  the  onward  step? 
Then,  though  all  men  say  that  this  is  the 
only  religion  of  the  world,  flee  from  it 
as  from  a  graven  idol.  This  is  no  longer 
your  religion:  it  is  your  superstition. 
You  are  no  longer  in  the  great  current  of 
religious  life:  you  are  only  in 

"  Some  dry  river  channel  where  the  bulrushes  tell 
How  the  water  was  wont  to  go  warbling  so  sweetly 
and  well." 

But,  though  the  water  once  flowed  never 
so  sweetly  along  that  channel,  it  is  nothing 
now  to  you.  But  the  living  waters  are  not 
far  away.  Even  now  you  hear  their  mur- 
mur. 

"  From  heart  to  heart,  from  creed  to  creed, 
The  hidden  river  runs." 


The  Unity  of  Christendom  131 

And,  when  you  find  what  is  indeed  the 
spring  of  your  true  inspiration,  you  will 
find  those  waters  again  which  shall  satisfy 
your  thirst. 

That  which  once  was  true  you  tell  me  is 
true  no  longer;  that  which  once  you  loved 
with  all  your  heart  seems  no  longer  worthy 
of  your  devotion.  But  may  it  not  be  be- 
cause some  higher  truth,  some  purer  love, 
is  coming  to  you?  Then  the  thing  which 
your  heart  at  its  best  most  purely  loves, 
that  follow;  that  truth  which  your  own 
mind  most  clearly  sees,  that  speak;  and, 
finding  there  the  secret  of  the  upbuilding 
of  your  individual  religious  life,  you  come 
upon  the  secret  of  religious  unity  as  well, 
for,  "speaking  the  truth  in  love,  we  grow 
up  to  Him  who  is  the  head." 

Paul's  glowing  ideal  still  remains  to 
be  fulfilled.  It  is  the  unity  of  religion 
through  the  fulfilment  of  manhood.  It  is 
not  the  artificial  unity  which  comes  when 
individuality  is  suppressed,  and  all  men  are 
reduced  to  a  single  pattern.  It  is  the  unity 
which  comes  when  "we  are  strong  to  appre- 
hend with  all  the  saints  what  is  the  breadth 


132  "Members  of  One  Body" 

and  length  and  height  and  depth "  of  our 
religion.  It  is  the  unity  which  comes 
when  we  "walk  worthily  of  the  calling 
wherewith  we  are  called,  with  all  lowliness 
and  meekness,  with  long  suffering,  forbear- 
ing one  another  in  love,  giving  diligence  to 
keep  the  unity  of  spirit  in  the  bond  of 
peace."  It  is  the  unity  which  comes  when 
we  recognize  most  clearly  the  varied  gifts 
of  men,  and  how  each  is  necessary  to  that 
great  body  which  grows  by  that  "which 
every  joint  supplieth,  according  to  the 
working  in  due  measure  of  each  several 
part."  It  is  the  unity  which  cannot  be 
made  perfect  till  manhood  is  made  perfect, 
"till  we  all  come  in  the  unity  of  faith  unto 
the  full-grown  man,  unto  the  measure  of 
the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ." 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 
LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


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